THE ART OF THE TABLE: FEASTS AND FANTASY / MYTH AND RELIGTION

At the heart of the home, whether rich or poor, is a fascination with food, and this shared experience not only provides the perfect opportunity to flaunt wealth and status through elaborate artefacts, but also illustrates shifting fashions and styles of eating. Through the centuries food and its rituals have provided a consistent theme for artists to celebrate, to analyse their world and even to develop complex ideas of morality. For the medieval and Christian world, bread and wine are the emblems of faith, in 17th century Spain and Holland still-life painting captures the prosperity of the age, and in the 19th century the informality of cafes and bars illustrates the arrival of a new social and urban order.

Food has a central role in the symbolism of myth and religion. In the Judeo- Christian tradition, apples, wine and hospitality are among the significant motifs for the artist, but the Greeks and Romans also developed strong narrative themes associating the magic or protection of individual gods and goddesses with elements of the Natural world and its provision. From the Garden of Eden to the war of Troy, this lecture explores the images which celebrate food as an emblem of faith and culture

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