Heather Weiss Week 2

Heather Weiss

Making the Mediterranean

Week 2

Reading Response

            In the 1600s, Europe was being treated to exotic beverages from around the world. Tea, coffee, and chocolate were all becoming accepted beverages, drank for pleasure by an increasing number of people rather than in tiny amounts by only the very wealthy (The True History of Chocolate, 2013). Tea form Asia and coffee from Africa and the Middle East arose in Europe mainly through trade, migration, and other interactions between the regions. Tea and coffee, while of course popular in Europe, were subject to eurocentrism nonetheless with the famous Redi of Tuscany referring to coffee as merely a Turkish beverage and incomparable to Tuscan wines (Bacchus in Tuscany, 1685). While this may have been a bit tongue in cheek, there is no doubt that Europeans of the time believed in European superiority. This was never more evident than in the acquisition of chocolate by Europe. Chocolate (along with many other invaluable agricultural products), came form the New World, where conquistadores were simultaneously decimating populations and cultures while adopting particular cultural elements seen in the Maya, Aztec, and Inca populations. Many in Europe, especially with the development of humanism and other moral thoughts that expanded the conception of humanity and it’s importance, may have seen this as the hypocrisy that it was. Parini Giuseppe surely did, as demonstrated in his poem Morning in which he quips in the voice of a servant to his chocolate drinking master, “they wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate,” (The Day, 1763).

            The chocolate that was fist introduced to Europe was very different than the chocolate that we are used to today. The tasting in class, wherein we sampled chocolate made in the ancient way, revealed this type to be drier with grains of sugar, and very minimal other flavoring. If you purchase a cinnamon chocolate bar today, you taste cinnamon and might even be able to smell cinnomnan through the wrapper. With these ancient style chocolates, the addition of spices did very little to change them, which is interesting given that spices were so expensive, I would imagine one would want to taste them if one went to the expense of putting them in their chocolate. Perhaps they were too expensive to put as much in as we do today. I would love to see if someone from the 15^th or 16^th century would enjoy our chocolate more or if the smooth fattiness and sugar would overwhelm them and make them dislike it.

Close reading of a Painting, Uffizi Gallery Exhibit

Still-life With Fruit and Insects, Rachel Ruysch 1711

            In my quest for a food related close reading, I noticed that the Uffizi gallery has many religious works, few of which center on food. Still-lives, paintings often of food and always devoid of people, were less common because if one commissioned a religious work, then one was freed from their sins in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Paintings of fruit and flowers did not free anyone form sin. This painting, a still life, is one of few done by women in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. While art and the art world was a male dominated sphere, there were women who chose to take up the brush as well. When they did, it was mostly still lives, and especially paintings of food as this was where much of the female life was centered (Parallels in Food and Art). This particular work uses hyperrealism and shows extreme textural and color detail on each fruit as well as in the eggs, butterfly, and lizard in the foreground. The bright light draws our eye to the rounded shapes of first the peaches, then the grapes and eggs, all symbolic of a bountiful harvest and of life. While still life painting was not as highly regarded as an art form, this type of realistic perfectionism was the type of still life considered to be of the most artistic value (Parallels in Food and Art). This perfectionism in still life is one that even famous male artists like Leonardo da Vinci strived for, and I applaud Ruysch for taking the small amount of artistic liberty women were giving and excelling to such a degree.