[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Throughout history, food
has served as subject matter, inspiration,
and of course, sustenance for artists.
Food has also been the art on a number of occasions.
This week we delve into the first decades
of the 17th century to consider the preponderance
of Dutch and Flemish still life paintings that
showcase a dazzling array of delicacies and treasures
from around the world.
While they don't so much demonstrate
the way people actually ate and drink,
they're immensely revealing and rather easy on the eyes,
nonetheless.
Instead of a cookbook, we're working
from this catalog from an exhibition at the Moritz House
Museum in the Hague.
They chose an exquisite painting for the cover, this still life
with cheeses, almonds, and pretzels
by Clara Peeters from about 1615.
And we're going to focus on recreating this one.
She made a number of remarkable still life paintings,
but I don't have access to these varieties of stunning flowers,
nor the culinary prowess to make this refined of a meat pie.
I think we've all seen enough of me arranging
elaborate presentations of seafood after art cooking
dolly.
And I don't have the heart, nor the wherewithal,
to come close to assembling this spread of birds.
In fact, what makes most of the meal still
life paintings of this era so exceptional
is what makes them difficult to reproduce.
This was the Dutch Golden Age, after all.
After fighting to free themselves from Spanish rule,
the Dutch Republic became an independent country
over the course of the 17th century,
dominating international trade and experiencing a period
of unprecedented prosperity.
The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602,
brought in staples, as well as luxury goods,
from around the world.
For those profiting off of these advancements
a diverse array of foods and decorations
were readily available.
Oh, wait-- are we cooking today?
Right.
First up is the humble pretzel, which
was eaten by both the elite and non-elite alike.
I've made some dough in advance using
a recipe I'll link to in the description, which I let rise
overnight in the fridge.
We're going to turn this out onto a work surface
and divide it into smaller chunks of dough.
Then we pat one down with our fingertips
to form a rough rectangle.
Roll it up.
And then start to work it out into a long rope.
When it seems to be long enough, loop it into the shape
we see in the painting, or at least do your best.
While I'm rolling out more of these, let's talk pretzels,
or as the Dutch call them zoute krakeling.
They seem to have surfaced in Europe sometime
in the medieval period.
And there are numerous and conflicting origin stories.
But the general consensus is that this
was food for fasting in the Christian faith.
We see it first illustrated in a 12th century manuscript.
And then it definitely appears as a Lenten food
in Bruegel's masterpiece of 1559 of the battle between carnival
and lent.
We see them in this happy painting
of a baker and his wife proudly presenting their wares.
Two other proud bakers announce the availability
of their fine pretzels in this picture from around 1660.
And then a variation of the same subject
matter by a different artist a couple decades later.
But anyhow, the pretzel was quite
popular in the 17th century Netherlands,
both in its sweet and salty iterations
and in both its soft and crispy forms.
You'll be pleased to know I got marginally better at making
this shape as I went.
So after those have sat under a damp towel for a half hour
to rise a bit, we take the important step
of giving them a quick dip in an alkaline solution.
The real way to do this is to use a food grade lye,
but we're doing a work around of baking soda
that has been previously baked in the oven at 250 degrees
Fahrenheit for an hour.
Supposedly, this alters the chemical composition
of the baking soda to make it perform more like lye.
We add about a quarter of a cup of this
to water and bring it to a simmer.
And then you gently dip your pretzels
into the solution for 10 seconds on one side and another 10
seconds on the reverse.
What happens here is that the starches
on the surface of the dough instantly
gelatinize and break proteins down into small peptide chains.
These will brown quickly in the oven,
giving us that pretzel color and testy flavor.
After that, it's back onto the parchment lined baking sheet.
Now we add some sea salt, not because we
see any in the painting, but because it
will taste oh so much better.
Salt was a luxury item at the time
and was, of course, included in meal still life paintings quite
frequently, stored elegantly in a fancy salt cellar like this.
And when they're ready, we'll send them
into the oven to bake at 325 for 50 minutes,
rotating the pans halfway through and checking
to make sure they've hardened to a crisp.
Next up comes cheese and a lot of it.
You'll admire the gorgeous stack of cheese in our source
painting, composed of a large half wheel of Gouda,
a small sheep's milk cheese on top of that,
and in front of that, there is a dark grayish green cheese
that probably came from the island of Texel
and got its color from parsley or horseradish juice.
The Gouda proved fairly easy to source.
Yes, this is my version of the Dutch pronunciation
named after the Dutch city where it was traded.
It's an insanely delicious cow's milk cheese
that gets better and crumbly or as it ages and crystallizes.
Our cheese is younger, but you can
see how Peeters has rendered her aged Gouda with such detail
and care, even showing the hole made by the cheese tester who
scoops out a plug and then reinserts it after testing.
For the magnificent greenish cheese in front,
I could not find anything remotely similar.
A kind cheesemonger directed me to this Monty Alva cheese,
a Spanish goat's milk cheese that
has a slightly greenish rind.
Sorry, I tried.
The smaller squarish cheese on top I couldn't find either.
This whole project would have likely
been easier if I was actually in the Netherlands.
But we have an American sheep's milk cheese instead
that has herbs on the outside and a creamier paste,
but it's delicious.
And we're going to be eating these too.
You can find many grand cheese stacks
in still life paintings of this time.
Cheese was not an import item, but produced in large amounts,
mostly in the northern Netherlands.
It was consumed locally and relatively inexpensively.
But the abundance and variety on display in these works
would have certainly signaled luxury.
Cheeses evoked prosperity because it
was a major export item and a point of pride for the Dutch.
Also, butter.
With all those dairy cows around you could make a lot of butter
as well.
And on top of the cheeses you'll see a plate
with curls of butter.
We have some French butter today,
which is at least from the right side of the Atlantic
and a handy little tool I never knew existed until now.
I'm quite confident this wasn't the way they did it then,
but hey, we're achieving roughly the same effect.
Now we need to find our best approximation
for the Chinese porcelain dish from the Wanli period
on the lower right of the painting.
There was an influx of Chinese porcelain
during the early 17th century brought in by the Dutch East
India Company and snapped up by an eager audience
with surplus income to spend.
They called it kraak porcelain after the name
for the Portuguese ships that delivered it.
By the time our painting was made,
porcelain would have been quite common in the Netherlands,
but still considered more special
than the alternative blue and white ceramic wear made
in nearby Delft.
Hey, we see you eating those oysters.
We'll be repurposing this plate that
was my grandmother's and is decidedly not Chinese,
but made in Germany from an adapted Chinese design.
Into the plate go almonds, which would have been costly
and came from the Mediterranean, although ours
are from somewhere in the vicinity of the California
coast.
Also, raisins, which would have come from the South as well,
and dried figs.
These were difficult to come by, but much
more plentiful during this time of abundance
and making more and more appearances
in recipes of the era.
And we can't forget bread.
Peeters included this little yeasty loaf hiding
behind the wine.
This wouldn't have been uncommon at the time,
but was regardless a luxury as it was made from wheat
and most of the less fortunate ate a denser rye bread.
I scanned our local bakeries for something roughly similar
in nature and landed on this most exotic
of breads that traveled all the way from a factory
in Torrance, California.
It met the qualifications of being round
and made from wheat, a classic American export
of the 20th century.
There's also a lidded wine glass in the painting, which
is a facon de venise glass made at the time
by Italian glass blowers working in and around Antwerp.
Wine was a near fixture in these paintings.
While the common folk mostly drink beer,
wine was part of a good meal for the upper classes,
usually imported from Germany, France, or Spain.
It not only signaled luxury, but also gave painters the chance
to show off their skills in rendering
finely detailed glasses.
We're going to use this lovely glass, which has no lid
and was hand blown in America by an American.
We do our best.
Now it's time to start assembling
are still life, which we're beginning
by creating a dark backdrop, which Peeters and other artists
often did, allowing the objects set against it
to stand out, like this enormous 15 pound half wheel of cheese.
While I'm arranging, it's important to note
that the Dutch did not invent the meal still life.
Frescoes and mosaics uncovered in Pompeii
from before 79 CE revealed fabulous still life spreads
of fruits, fish, and fowl.
But this moment in Dutch history is when the genre
solidified and flourished.
Beforehand in the region, food had
been depicted in paintings of the Last Supper
and in numerous kitchen scenes populated with people, banquets
with diners gathered all around, and family portraits set
in front of a laid table.
But figures in these scenes gradually
started creeping away into the distance and food more and more
into the foreground.
Early independent meals still lifes
tended to have a moral component,
showing the difference between rich and poor and sometimes
work in a landscape on the side.
In the first decades of the 17th century,
we begin to see just the table and the delicacies
without people and with less overt moral agendas.
These were not meals as they were usually presented,
but carefully selected and arranged
objects determined with regard to color, form, texture,
and luster.
We're using a copper picture instead
of the ceramic Bellarmine jug in the painting.
But it gives a nice reflection, which
was important in these still lifes, especially those
by Clara Peeters.
In the pewter lid, you can just make out
the white bonneted reflection of the artist.
While this later became a more common practice,
Peeters was one of the first artists north of the Alps
to paint self-portraits in reflective surfaces.
And she did this masterfully.
We know precious little about this artist whose earliest
known still life dates to 1607.
There are 40 known paintings attributed to her,
identified because she thankfully signed them
in often clever ways, like on the engraved silver
bridal knife pictured in this work.
We conclude from the markings on her panels and copper plates
that she worked in or near Antwerp,
a city that reached its economic and cultural peak
in the 16th century, until it came
under Spanish rule and many of its artisans and scientists
fled north.
Her work was likely well-known in its day
and collected early on by important and royal patrons.
We believe this painting is probably a self-portrait.
As I try to finagle our objects into roughly
the same arrangement of our painting,
it becomes clear that while Peeters' items are incredibly
realistically rendered, the view she provides
us isn't photographic.
There's a sense of depth created with overlapping objects,
but the space is collapsed in a manner we cannot duplicate.
And all of her items are rendered
in relatively equal focus.
We can't say for sure what these paintings really meant
at the time they were made.
They weren't considered the pinnacle
of artistic achievement.
That was reserved for historical, biblical, and
mythological subject matter.
But these paintings could have represented hospitality
hanging on the wall of the well-to-do
and welcoming guests, or perhaps were
non-perishable tableaux of plenty that
were given to others as gifts.
They also could have served as warnings
of the dangers of excess.
There are two figures engraved on the handle of Peeters'
bridal knife with the words feed us, faith, and tempo, short
for temperance, two of the seven virtues
that were depicted mostly in female form.
Which calls to mind the Dutch saying
that translates to something like dairy on top of dairy
is the work of the devil.
Or if you want it to rhyme like it does in Dutch, butter
on cheese, the devil to please, an urge to moderation,
indicating that putting both cheese and butter on your bread
is excessive.
There is also some thought that aged cheeses
might be a reminder of decay, transience,
and death, similar to the vanitas paintings
of the time meant to evoke the fleeting nature of life.
What we do know is that these paintings illustrate
with astounding workmanship the magnificent spread
of goods available in the low countries
during this golden age.
In our own time, where global markets bring goods
from around the world to our doorstep
with a mere tap of a screen, it's more difficult now
than it was then to imagine the sumptuous world of plenty
evoked by these items.
Although these actual foods will wither and rot, no scarcity
or want exists within these fixed worlds
created by Clara Peeters and her contemporaries.
They are a glimpse into an extraordinary moment
in history.
And they are oh so stunning to behold.
Want to see more unlikely mash-ups between art history
and cooking?
Support us on Patreon.
Thanks to all of our patrons for supporting the Art
Assignment, especially Vincent Apa and Indianapolis Homes
Realty.
[MUSIC PLAYING]