This seminar focuses on the interplay of art and cuisine in Renaissance Italy, offering a feast for eye and palate.

Spurred by humanistic ideals and an increasing appetite for luxury, both artists and cooks responded to society’s spiritual and material desires.

 Cooks created extravagant menus for feasts and banquets and occasionally produced edible table decorations imitating actual works of art, while artists depicted food in still-life paintings and in secular and sacred scenes.

9:30 to 10:30 a.m. The Lives and Work of Renaissance Artists and Cooks

Culinary texts and artistic portrayals of the period, materials the artisans used, and the significance of eggs, lard, and oils in the studio and kitchen.

10:45 a.m. to 12 noon Setting the Table

The Renaissance table’s many amusements, from sugar and marzipan decorations to elaborately painted tableware.

12 noon to 1:30 p.m. A Renaissance Banquet

1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Sacred Suppers

Da Vinci’s famous The Last Supper; other sacred scenes by Caravaggio, Veronese, and Tintoretto.

2:45 to 4 p.m. Significant Still Lifes, Erotic Appetites

Artists try to raise their social status with re-creations of classical antiquity’s legendary still lifes. Food paintings with social and sexual themes. Evocative realism in works by Caravaggio, Passarotti, and Campi.

John Varriano is a professor emeritus of art history at Mount Holyoke College. His book Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy (University of California Press) is available for signing.

Reservations required; no tickets sold at door.

Connect with the Authors is a continuously updated listing of past, present, and future author visits. Through this site, each publication can be purchased in advance of, or following, the program.