Ordine et officij de casa de lo Illustrissimo Signor Duca de Urbino & La table et ses dessous: Culture, alimentation et convivialite en Italic (XIVe - XVIe siecles) & Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft.

Sabine Eiche, ed., Ordine et officij de casa de lo Illustrissimo Signor Duca de Urbino

Urbino: Accademia Rafaello, 1999. 11 pls. + 145 pp. n.p. ISBN: 88-87573-03-4.

Adelin Charles Fiorato and Anna Fontes Baratto, eds., La table et ses dessous: Culture, alimentation et convivialite en Italic (XIVe - XVIe siecles) (Cahiers de la Renaissance italienne, 4.) Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1999. 7 pls. + 364 pp. Ffr 150. ISBN: 2-87854-163-4.

W. Patrick McCray, Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. xii + 20 pls. + 3 maps + 240 pp. $84.95. ISBN: 0-7546-0050-5.

Food and the art of eating in Renaissance Italy constitute the thread that ties these three works together, though it is frayed here and there and unraveled a bit at times. Sabine Eiche presents a fine edition of the anonymous household manual of the Montefeltro court that is preceded by useful introductory essays in English by John Larner, John Law, Allen Grieco, and Eiche. As twenty-three of the sixty-four chapters of the early sixteenth-century treatise deal with food, it pairs nicely with Fiorato and Fontes Baratto's collection of essays on alimentation and its various guises and meanings in Italian culture. These discussions range from Barbarino's early fourteenth-century advice for women seeking to inculcate good manners (Sylviane Lazard), to Mannerist artist Pontormo's short Florentine journal (1554-1556) in which he obsesses over his nourishment, health, and ability to complete the frescoes for the choir of San Lorenzo (Helene Giovannetti). Most essays deal with literary sources, but food symbolism fo r Saint Catherine of Siena (Luce d'Eramo), famine in chronicles (Corinne Lucas), and depictions of sacred and profane comessation in sixteenth-century art (Helene Albani) add variety to the mix. Artistic depictions of fine meals also served Patrick McCray in his monograph on Venetian glass-making, as he sought to understand the appeal, use, and early history of this distinctive product that is still revered today.

McCray, a Reasearch Asociate in the Program on Culture, Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Arizona, considers his exploration of the Venetian glass industry and business a case study in the development of the early industrial system. He notes the shift from guild rule and artisanal production to entrepreneurial enterprise dependent on specialized labor, active experimentation, state support, and appeal to current fashions. Using shopping lists, inventories, recipe books, diaries, and extant glassware as well as artistic depictions he tries to meld the tools and outlooks of the historian of technology and the material scientist with those of the connoisseur of fine goods. He seeks to broaden our understanding of the full context of glass production and consumption, especially the role (key to him) of consumer demand in driving stylistic changes, and to depict this industry as a microcosm of the Venetian economy as a whole. Though McCray's discussion ranges from Roman and Byzantine forerunne rs to the decisive market capture by English lead crystal in the later seventeenth century, it focuses on the decades between the revival of Venetian glass-making around 1450 and Venice's general economic decline in the later 1600s.

The result is bold and broad, providing both useful anecdote and meaningful application of a well-crafted model of early capitalism in action. McCray's assertion that the Renaissance consumer demanded "moderately priced luxury goods that exemplified fine craftsmanship, quality, novelty; and beauty" (126), and that Venetian glassmakers filled this need, presents a clear focal point for his many trips around this center: the relationship of glass prices to precious metal and majolica wares, the importance of both intergenerational knowledge flow ("codification of knowledge") and technical innovation, and the foreign sources for all of the necessary raw materials. Two limitations, however, concern this reader. McCray's use of a broad range of sources (chemical, archaeological, artistic, documentary) is rather limited by his reliance on printed archival materials for documentation. According to his notes, he depends upon Luigi Zechin's Vetro e vetrai di Murano (3 vols., 1987-1990) for most of his Venetian materia l, though he does claim to have "examined selected original source documents" (172). His treatment of the records of consumer Francesco Datini (consistently throughout "Datani") is limited to conclusions drawn from the brief examples of household goods included in Iris Origo's Merchant of Prato, which he appears to treat as full listings of household wares. Why ignore the valuable archival materials? My final concern is about the very poor level of text production to which the work all too often falls. Elementary grammatical errors and other infelicities complement simply poor proofreading. These, unfortunately, mar the pleasure of reading and bring into question the patience and attention of both author and publisher.

Eiche has published the Vatican manuscript Urb. lat. 1248, which consists of an account, perhaps idealized, of life at court in the later fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Its anonymous author was clearly connected to a court -- probably in Urbino -- and perhaps was the maestro di casa himself. As John Larner points out in his introductory essay, it is part school of morals for young pages and part daily guide to running the huge staff. The tone is courtly and polished, and perhaps reflects an older man's view of the ways a court should be run. Complementary to the Courtier, it takes the pleasantries and formal relationships of the higher classes for granted, while focusing on the staff that sustains these. Purchasing, storing, preparing and presenting food, keeping records, and providing hospitality preoccupy the author, who may be trying to correct the problems of a failing court, perhaps as late as the 1520s if Eiche is correct. Eiche has appended, in addition to the five short introductions, a series of thirty seven letters concerning the ducal court from 1522 to 1562 that shed some additional light on the workings of the staff, especially the chief or maestro di casa. Overall the edition is of great value to those interested in understanding the life behind the facade of the Renaissance Italian court or in social relationships of the serving class more generally. The introductory pieces are clear and useful in pointing to major themes and in posting signs to the background and meaning of the manuscript.

Fiorato and Fontes Baratto present thirteen studies that reflect the current interests of the Centre de Recherche sur L'Italie a l'epoche de la Reforme. Food and its consumption meet a fundamental human need, but they also provide a richsource of metaphors, symbols, and backdrops for other human activities. The symbolism of alimentation and its use in Christian theology and worship are explored by Luce d'Eramo through the letters of St. Catherine of Siena. The seemingly contradictory notions that the saint denies overt carnality yet constantly uses carnal language for the most spiritual of subjects is nothing new to the student of medieval female spirituality. The inclusion of this perspective here, however, reminds us of the fundamental nature of food and consumption language, whether it is hungering for God, consuming Him in the Eucharist, or vomiting up sin. Nella Bianchi Bensimon takes us from religion to astrological biology in her discussion of Ficino's De vita libri tres, which was dedicated to Il Mag nifico in 1489 and recently translated into English. Food nourishes the blood that produces the spirit and the moods that dominate the individual. His Neoplatonic and astrological assumptions of the basic analogy of man to the universe support the notion of correspondences of earthly foods to celestial realities, and that proper eating maintains our own relation to the cosmos.

The melancholic tendencies of geniuses need to be treated, whether by iatromathematics, pharmacology, magic, or diet, and Ficino focuses on foods that best serve the intellect. His choices are rather healthy in fact, and his advice to shun the fried, the salty, and the highly acidic are words to live by.

A concern for how as well as what one eats underlies the aesthetic of courtly life, as outlined in Sylviane Lazard's study of Francesco da Barbarino's Reggimento e costumi di donna, an allegorical and didactic poem dated to the second decade of the Trecento. Though ostensibly aimed at women of all classes and ages, its clear targets were the young ladies at court. Eating at table was not merely a natural act, but also a social and symbolic one that required both the reality and the appearance of modesty, prudence, and temperance. Good education in these matters induces the reason that rules the appetites and actions, and formal meals present opportunities to display the cortesia of both attitude and image. At the far end of the period covered by the collection, 'Moderata Fonte' wrote a Venetian symposium among seven women who critique and judge their peers, both masculine and feminine. In the course of the discussion, food, nourishment, and dining manners take their places as subjects. The women display their learned "scientific" side in explaining the Ficinian relations of food, humors, and celestial harmonies, and bring these down to clear matters of their health and the differences in the alimentary needs of men and women. Pliny, Galen, and Hippocrates decorate the discussion and truly seem to underpin it, giving depth to Moderata's characters and stated views. Claire Lesage's study draws out Moderata's contemporary sources and own voice, and places her and her views in the context of the later sixteenth century and its anti-feminist prejudices.

Literary fiction provides ample opportunities for authors to use food, eating, gluttony, hunger, and feasting as elements in both characterization and action. Hunger, food, and satiety can be used as the antithesis of chivalric honor, as in Pulci's picaresque parody Morgante (portions of which are reproduced in French in appendix I). The eponymous hero and his companion Margutte perform digestive exploits to rival the greatest knightly feats, obliquely pitting their overt materialism against the selfless prowess of the men at arms. The edible replaces the spiritual as Pulci carnivalizes religion as well as nobility: points of creedal doctrine are reduced to a menu of victuals. Hunting is reduced to procuring of nourishment, and courtly banqueting becomes riotous gluttony. Jean-Pierre Garrido celebrates this pre-Rabelais rabelasianism as grand bouffe, though with a critical edge. Fontes Baratto's study of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti's Le Porretane emphasizes the various ways in which alimentary themes tie the stories together and heighten the interest of the raconteurs at the Bolognese spa. The spa itself establishes a strict dietary regimen, and thus sets the stage for fanciful tales of friars fighting mice for cheese and the juxtaposition of monastic meals with Platonic symposia. Inversion and metaphor appear, as anus and mouth are exchanged in function, and overall the theme of storytelling as nourishment of souls informs the stories and framing situation.

Helene Albani studies Cinquecento paintings of dining to determine the relationship of mundane scenes to those labeled as sacred. Stylized idealization moved toward greater and more gritty realism as we move from Titian to Caravaggio and Carracci, and the symbolism of the act of eating is replaced by the physiological fact of eating, most strikingly perhaps in the purely secular Bean Eater by Carracci. The discoveries in the western hemisphere led to the importation of new foods and the need to give names to these foods occurred at the same time that Europeans were striving to understand the rules and order underlying human verbal expression. Mathee Giacomo explores the ways in which Europeans introduce very foreign terminology and discuss it in a variety of sources. This also raises the issue of European self and non-European "other": linguistics accompanies notions of identity and even humanity.

Hunger among the peasantry and as themes in Emilian chronicles and the work of Ruzante occupy Jean-Claude Zancarini and Corinne Lucas, respectively. Chantal Blanche lays out the role of banquets and feasting in Italian comedy from Aretino to Liberati, and Fiorato does the same service for the mistreated character Manente in the last novella of Antonfrancesco Grazzini's alimentarily titled collection Gene.