The greats feasts in paintings

2. The greats feasts in paintings

4. RUBENS, Peter Paul The Feast of Herod The ultimate party foul: you lift up the lid on the serving tray, and there, staring back at you, is the head of John the Baptist. Rubens’s grand painting, stylish and macabre by turns, shows the moment when Salome, having danced for her stepfather Herod, wins her prize of the decapitated saint – which is presented as just another course at this feast, along with lobster and game birds. Herodias, Salome’s mother, pokes at John’s tongue with a fork, while her husband’s eyes bulge in horror.

5. RUBENS, Peter Paul The Feast of Herod 1633 Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

6. RUBENS, Peter Paul The Feast of Herod (detail) 1633 Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

12. BELLINI, Giovanni The Feast of the Gods The divine banquet was a frequent theme of Italian painting in the 16th Century, and in fact many Renaissance artists would stage their own banquets with Olympian costumes and lavish eats. (The painter Andrea del Sarto once designed a church made of sausages and parmesan.) Bellini’s final major work – made with assistance from a young Titian, his student – is a masterpiece of this mythological genre: the fertility god Priapus is putting the moves on a nymph on right, while Jupiter and the other divinities are drinking wine. An innovation: Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, newly imported to Europe.

13. BELLINI, Giovanni The Feast of the Gods 1514 Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington

14. BELLINI, Giovanni The Feast of the Gods (detail) 1514 Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington

22. MARTIN, John Belshazzar’s Feast Martin was one of the strangest painters of 19th-Century England, given to apocalyptic visions that often tipped into kitsch. Here he depicts a dizzying scene from the Book of Daniel, in which the titular king of Babylon gets the bad news, glowing on the wall at left, that “thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” The feast in the foreground is overshadowed by Martin’s comically grand fantasy of Babylonian architecture, with columns extending out to infinity, and the terrible, lightning-cracked sky above.

23. MARTIN, John Belshazzar’s Feast c 1821 Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

24. MARTIN, John Belshazzar’s Feast (detail) c 1821 Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

30. VERONESE, Paolo The Marriage at Cana This massive feast scene has the singular misfortune of hanging across from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre’s Italian wing, thus making it one of the most ignored masterpieces of all of Western art. The mega-wedding, at which Christ has just turned water into wine, has been transposed from Cana to contemporary Venice. The finely dressed guests seem to be on the dessert course, but note that none of them is actually eating. While a genre scene might depict lower-class wedding-goers consuming food and drink, here the feast is a public pageant, a showcase for wealth and power.

31. VERONESE, Paolo The Marriage at Cana 1563 Oil on canvas, 666 x 990 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris

32. VERONESE, Paolo The Marriage at Cana(detail) 1563 Oil on canvas, 666 x 990 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris

38. STEEN, Jan The Dissolute Household While feast scenes in the High Renaissance depicted gods or nobles, Dutch artists in the 17th Century turned to domestic scenes, sometimes with a moralising gaze. Steen’s revelers indulge in just about every sin imaginable: the man in black is trying to seduce the serving maid, while the woman in the foreground is so busy getting her drink on that she doesn’t notice she’s trampling a bible underfoot. As for the large ham that served as the center of this feast, it’s been abandoned on the floor, ready to be eaten by the family cat.

39. STEEN, Jan The Dissolute Household 1663-64 Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

40. STEEN, Jan The Dissolute Household (detail) 1663-64 Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

47. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder Peasant Wedding Feast What differentiated Bruegel from his Italian contemporaries was the fact that he painted real people who went about their typical business compared to the high society Bacchanalian festivities portrayed in southern Europe. In the foreground, two men carry a huge tray (made of a messy door if we look closely) from oatmeal bowls and soup; Two musicians are playing the music of the pipe. The bride is seated in front of the green wall hanging with a wreath of paper suspended over her head, but speculation abounds as to who the bridegroom might be ... or whether she is even in the painting at all.

48. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder Peasant Wedding Feast c. 1567 Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

49. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder Peasant Wedding Feast (detail) c. 1567 Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

50. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder Peasant Wedding (detail) c. 1567 Oil on wood, width of detail 25 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna The bride is sitting under her bridal crown; it is unclear which of the others is the bridegroom.

56. MANDIJN, Jan Burlesque Feast This motley banquet is a satirical depiction of a peasant wedding to which a number of guests have been invited, all equally bizarre and absurd. The main character is a stout and slovenly bride wearing a crown of wooden spoons, the symbol of gluttony, and eggshells, the symbol of crassitude and lechery. Behind her a red drapery is vaulted like a baldachin on which rests a crown of laurel, both of which were customary elements in Flemish peasant weddings of the 16th and 17th centuries, while the rattle hanging from the crown of laurel is another reference to foolishness.

57. MANDIJN, Jan Burlesque Feast c. 1550 Oil on oak panel, 98,5 x 147 cm Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao

58. MANDIJN, Jan Burlesque Feast (detail) c. 1550 Oil on oak panel, 98,5 x 147 cm Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao

67. The greats feasts in paintings images and text credit www. Music wav. created olga.e. thanks for watching oes

The greats feasts in paintings

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