Week 2 Reflection
This past week’s readings illustrated how
the encounter of the New World reshaped the European, Old World, especially the
Italian economy, society, and culture. We consider the European 17th
to 18th centuries as the early stages of our modern world. Through
the society, economy, and culture of Europe during this era, we investigated
the effects of the new ingredients into the Old World diet. We also looked at
the ways New World crops were being cultivated, prepared, and consumed by
Europeans. For example, we examined the history of chocolate and it’s
widespread use throughout Europe through The
True History of Chocolate. Through Mistress
of the Inn, we see the desire of drinking chocolate by the aristocratic
class of Italy. Furthermore, The Day shows
us how society dictates how an aristocratic man drinks his morning beverage,
either chocolate or coffee, depending on last night’s dinner or his body size. Lastly,
we analyzed the depiction of New World crops in European art culture of the
Baroque period through Significant Still
Lifes.
In The
True History of Chocolate, Sophie and Michael Coe explains a chronological
story of chocolate’s journey from Central and South America to Europe. Coe
talks about the dietary, medicinal, and societal uses of chocolate through its
European expedition that began in Spain, traveled to Italy and France, and
finally ending in England. Similar to coffee and its ability to reshape Ottoman
society, the use of chocolate was able to redefine the social structures of Europe
by making it only available to the elite until its widespread use by the
commoners. The debate of chocolate’s medicinal effects between ecclesiastical
and secular powers show how a single crop from the New World could be used as a
substitute for their regular diet. Lastly, chocolate is similar to other New
World crops such as tomato and sugar because different cultures adopted and
invented a variety of ways to consume it.
In The
Mistress of the Inn, Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni portrays the love drama
of the innkeeper, Mirandolina, and the courtship of two noblemen. However, she
is determined to captivate another guest, Cavalier di Ripafratta, because she
sees his indifference to women as a challenge that she can change him.
Ultimately, all her advancements fail, removes the Count and Marquis, and ends
up with Fabricus, whom her father suggested as a husband. In this story, we see
chocolate as a beverage greatly loved by the aristocracy, which in this case is
Marquis, and will pay great sums of money to acquire such a desirable
commodity. We can relate the consumption of chocolate by the bourgeois with
today’s consumption of expensive wine by the wealthy. Today, the drinking of
wine has become a demarcation of one’s social and economic standing. The rich
drink wine that is priced at an exorbitant amount depending on its origin and
the age. However, these are dictated by only a few people in society and can be
considered irrational thinking, similar to the ways chocolate was describe to
have divine properties.
In The
Day, Italian satirist Giuseppe Parini makes fun of the aristocracy of
Italy. At first glance, Parini’s work shows great detail about the mundane
routine of a young man and the societal expectations that he is required to
follow. Parini shows that the young man can only drink chocolate in the morning
if he still needs to digest the food from the past night’s dinner. However, if
he was successful in digesting yesterday’s dinner, but has the tendency to be
fat, then the young man can only drink coffee in the morning. From comparing
the breakfast of Italy and the United States, we can still see that society
still dictate rules for eating. In the United States, a “healthy and hearty”
breakfast is a mixture of eggs, bacon, sausages, sliced bread, toast, pancakes
with syrup, cereal, and the choice of coffee or orange juice as the beverage.
In sharp contrast, Italian breakfast has a lot less calories and protein, which
usually consists of the coffee-and-bread pair such as cornetto and cappuccino.
Society and how it governs every meal is a continuous cycle since food
consumption is controlled what is available in the market and its
affordability.
Significant
Still Lifes, in John Varriano’s Tastes
and Temptations, depicts two popular genres of Baroque art. The first is
called xenia that aims to compete
with the still-life paintings of classical Greco-Roman times. The second genre
is called bodegones, which were
still-life paintings that represented kitchens and taverns that featured the
ingredients and patrons of the establishments. The depiction of food in art is
reflective of the era’s desire to satisfy the hunger of the average person.
This expression of hunger through art is still in use today, but in different
mediums. For example, artists use graffiti, photography, and film to illustrate
the amount of people who are malnourished. It is worst today than it was during
the Baroque period because today’s globalized economy produces more food than
it can consume and a large percentage of the world food production goes to
waste. It is safe to conclude that a xenia
or bodegones made in the modern world
will not be positively received since it would conjure a horrific image.
Uffizi Art Close Reading
The painting that I chose to analyze is the Good Luck by the Dutch painter Gherardo
delle Notti. The painting uses oil on canvas and was made between 1617 and
1619. It is stipulated that Cosimo II bought the painting from delle Notti
through his secretary Andrea Cioli in Rome during 1620. In 1627, Ferdinando II
gave the painting to his mother, Maria Magdalena of Austria, as a gift, which
she kept it at the Villa di Poggio Imperiale. It has been part of the Uffizi’s
inventory since 1773. The title describes the activity that is depicted by the seven
characters of delle Notti’s painting. At the background, there is an adult male
and two adult women, one of which is holding a sleeping baby. At the
foreground, we can see that one woman, with a headscarf wrapped around her
head, is reading another woman’s fortune through her right palm. All eyes are
on the fortuneteller as she points out what she sees on the hand of the other
woman. A man hovers right above the woman who is hearing her fortune and holds
her under the hand and her left shoulder. His facial expression shows that he
is more intrigued by the fortuneteller than the women receiving fortune because
he sees the need to tip over and see the lines of the hand at a closer glance.
At the middle of the painting, we see a table that has two piles of cards and
several fruits. From the placement of the cards and fruits, we can infer that
the people are having a casual occasion and enjoying the company of their
friends. The food on the table represents food that the guests can eat if they
are slightly hungry. The amount of food
on the table is reflective of the lack of food available to the common people.
Here, there are only four kinds of fruit that is shared amongst six
adults. Since the painting does not each
person having each type of fruit, this strongly suggests that the fruits are
only to be eaten by those who are really hungry. This is similar to today’s “snack
foods” laid out on the table during social events.
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