Food Related Painting of the Week

Supper at Emmaus
Marco Marziale, 1506

Supper at Emmaus
(from the Web Gallery of Art)

This painting illustrates one of the problems I have to face: early medieval artwork was usually much more concerned with religion than it was with food. I can find heaps of paintings and illuminations depicting religious figures, but very few that have any kind of accurate depiction of medieval food (I almost chose a painting of Herod's banquet where John the Baptists' head was being served on a platter, but it just wasn't food-related enough).

At any rate, there actually is a bit of interesting food-related stuff going on in this picture. Most prominent of course are the oddly shaped loaves of bread. I haven't seen kidney-shaped loaves before. Each loaf has a strange little dimple on the side as well - perhaps it's a baker's mark.

In front of each diner is a rectangular trencher, apparently made of metal. Bread trenchers were increasingly popular for feasts in the later 14th and early 15th centuries, but may have fallen out of fashion by the time this was painted. I'm not sure exactly what;s on these trenchers. It looks kind of like the calamari I get at the local sushi place, but I kind of doubt that. The ones on Jesus' trencher look like uniform slices of something. Meat? Sippets?

Aside from the trencher and a spiffy knife for each diner, the remaining items on the table are all rather plain. Jesus's bowl, the pitcher, and the glasses are certainly of nice quality (metal and glass), but are not ornate. The glasses don't even have the stereotypical prunts (bumps added to the outside to make the glass less slippery). The possible exception is the salt cellar in front of Jesus, which looks like it's made of gold or brass and appears to have some decoration around the side.

That's it for the food though - just bread, wine, and some mysterious things on trenchers.

The sawhorse table is rather interesting of course, as are the stools at either end. I still need to get around to making a couple of tables like this, and maybe stools too. Others may be fascinated by the clothes, hats, rosaries, belt pouches, napkins, boot closures, and the fact that the fold lines are so visible on the table cloth, but not me. I didn't notice those things at all.

Making a Medieval Field Kitchen - Part 3

The thought of a proper medieval kitchen is always lurking somewhere in the back of my mind (oddly accompanied by music from George Harrison), so when I spent Memorial Day at the house of a skilled carpenter and he showed me his reproduction of a medieval table I think I showed remarkable restraint in that I did not scream "WANT" at the top of my lungs, nor did I drool upon it.

What Conal (the woodworker) made was a beautiful copy of a sawhorse table. Sadly, I don't have a picture (yet) of the one he made, but I did find a couple of examples online.

Image from Tacuinum Sanitatis, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

(note: count the legs on each sawhorse)

I've seen several images of this sort of table in various medieval sources. The really nice thing about them is that they can be broken down into their component parts for transport. Conal said the one he made takes up surprisingly little space. That being said, these tables are remarkably stable.

Here's another picture I found online of a similar table:

Detail of a table made by a

member of the Company of the Golden Lyon

So Conal said either he'd make two of these tables for me, or at least he'd help me make them. The plan is to use maple if I can get it cheaply enough. I'll document the whole process with pictures and such.