`CoMfort` food - Comune di Siena

BANQUETS, FOOD AND COMMERCE IN SIENESE ART
‘Comfort’ Food
Departure from the Museum of the Opera della Metropolitana del Duomo
piazza Duomo, 8
2
This itinerary will focus exclusively on the theme of “comfort” food for new mothers and how this was served from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth centuries. We can trace this theme in various Sienese paintings in particular in episodes relating to the Birth of the Virgin.
As is well known, the earliest images of this subject are of Greek-Byzantine origin and began to be widely diffused in European art in
the late Medieval period and Renaissance. They are interesting from the point of view of the kind of sustenance given to new mothers
who had just given birth. There are usually three maidservants, holding dishes who serve Saint Anne, normally with a cup containing
something to drink, a bowel with a small egg or some meat and sometimes also an ornamental fan (flabellum), to give relief both to the
new mother and to the child, all symbols of life and renewal. The opulence typical of the funrishings of Saint Anne’s bedroom frequently
recur in Italian art and the choice of the interior decoration generally reflect the tastes and fashions of the period in which the work was
produced.
Sienese art offers the oppurtunity of observing the changes in local customs according to the kind of comfort food prepared following
birth and the relative dishes used for the occasion. One can see a gradual transition from simple receptacles and bowels in terraotta
to the use of straw baskets to hold all the dishes together; from simple wooden trays to deschi da parto, painted or inlaid wooden trays
produced in the workshops of the most important painters of the period, on occasion of the happy event of the birth of a child, to more
practical bed tables.
The greatest care and attention was given to the new mother’s diet and famlies often spent alot of money buying the best quality products
suitable for strengthening the mother during the lengthy breast-feeding period.
Places in the itinerary
Museum of the Opera della metropolitana del Duomo (piazza Duomo, 8)
The Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena (via San Pietro, 29)
The Oratory of San Bernardino (piazza San Francesco)
The itinerary necessarily starts at the Cathedral Museum and the most famous Birth of the Virgin in Siena, painted by Pietro Lorenzetti
before 1342 for one of the altars of the Cathedral dedicated to the Patron saints of the city, to celebrate the great Maesta by Duccio di
Buoninsegna at that time on the high altar.
In the painting Saint Anne is reclining on a plaid blanket, like the ones produced in Siena at the beginning of the fourteenth century: the
sargia, a light wool fabric of English origin. In the foreground the midwives are washing the little baby, while two maidservants bring in
food in a straw basket covered with an elegant cloth in a fabric typical of Pienza, and a painted ceramic jug. One of the most common
drinks offered to new mothers was a sweetened infusion of mallow and fennel, in the belief that this made the mother’s milk more easily
digestible for the newborn child.
Other works on this same theme can be seen nearby in the Pinacoteca Nazionale,
An unusual example is the panel of the Birth of the Virgin (1385/90), from Colle di Val d’Elsa, stylistically similar to the hand of the Master
of San Lucchese (or Cennino Cennini?), which is particularly interesting because of the minute attention that the artist gives the domestic
environment. There is a precisely described washbasin with a drain and what looks like a tap, where there are dishes in pewter and
copper; On a shelf above the basin, there is a still-life with elegant ceramics and the typicl local hand towels in white cotton embroidered
with black yarn.
Of a small scale but important from a documentary point of view is one of the predella panels of the Tryptich of the Coronation of the
Virgin (1388) by Bartolo di Fredi, one of the most typical representatives of the Sienese school of the second half of the fourteenth century.
The composition is similar to the better know fresco by the same artist in the church of Sant’Agostino in San Gimignano with scenes from
the Life of the Virgin, inspired by the lost frescoes by the Lorenzetti brothers, that were painted on the facade of the hospital of Santa Maria
della Scala. In the background a maidservant is bringingi in a drink in a terracotta jug and some meat for the new mother. The meat was
always rigorously white considered less heavy than pork or veal. In Sienese painting one can often see baby chickens, roosters, and
small birds, and it seems that one can sometimes even make out lamb and rabbit. Meat was mostly boiled and sometimes even roast
meat was boiled before being put on the spit.
Continuing our tour inside the Pinacoteca, there is the splend Tryptich by Paolo di Giovanni Fei of 1391/99. A seated Saint Anne is
drying her hands with an embroidered cloth, typical of Siena and the same as the one covering the food in the straw basket being carried
in by a young woman, echoing the iconography in the altar panel by Pietro Lorenzetti for the Duomo. A second woman is holding two
jugs, probably one with water and one with wine: in these circumstances they would prepare a herbal wine, based on a Hippocratic
tradition which was believed to be a tonic for new mothers and for the sick, because, as asserted by the Medieval scholar, Aldobrando
da Siena, if drunk with moderation it would produce “good blood and good colour and all the virtues of a strong body”.
To conclude our visit, there is a painting dating to the early sixteenth century by an artist from the workshop of the Sienese painter
Girolamo di Benvenuto. A maidservant is holding a washbasin and a jug while another is carrying a bowel with some hot broth and a
third a plate bearing a small boiled bird. This episode emphasizes the importance of chicken or capon broth as one of the first dishes
considered suitable for a new mother. Sometimes a nourishing beaten egg would be added to the broth and bread might be soaked in
the broth at which point the result would be referred to as pappa, and was thought to help the arrival of the mother’s milk. These same
properties were attributed to what was called a farinata, which was made from sieved white flour or chestnut flour with the addition of
milk and some cubes of dry bread.
Ending our itinerary with a pleasant walk, we will continue to the Oratory of San Bernardino, where Girolamo del Pacchia, one
of the most popular artists in Siena at the time, painted his Birth of the Virgin in 1517. This fresco is part of an important decorative cycle
in the Oratory of San Bernardino painted by the major ariists active in Siena in the first few decdaes of the sixteenth century: Girolamo
del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and Sodoma. The new mother’s bedroom is typical of the sixteenth century with its luxurious wooden
bed, and the chests for belongings, and the high bedhead inlaid with mother of pearl, and decorated with grottesques and candelabra
which were very fashionable during this period. In the background a young woman is bringing in a hot drink and another a flask and
flattened bread on a desco da parto. Bread wafers or flatbread accompanied by milk and honey were often given to people who were
bedridden for long periods of time. The milk could be goatsmilk, sheepsmilk, cowsmilk or almond milk. For a long time honey was the
only sweetener used given that sugar, which was referred to as sale arabo (Arabian salt) was initally a costly and luxury product.
by Lucia Pacchierotti and Beatrice Pulcinelli - Art historians, Comune di Siena
Museum of the Opera della
metropolitana del Duomo
Piazza Duomo, 8 – Siena
Information: tel. 0577 283048
Opening hours:
Daily
from 01/03 to 31/10: 10.30 – 19.00
from 01/11 to 28/02 : 10.30 – 17.30
Tickets: € 7.00
Pinacoteca Nazionale
Via di San Pietro, 29 – Siena
Reservations and information: 0577
286143
Opening hours:
Mondays: 9.00 – 13.00
From Tuesdays to Saturdays: 8.15 –
19.15
Sundays and holidays: 9.00 – 13.00
Closed: January 1, May 1,
December 25
On July 2 and August 16:
9.00 – 13.00
Tickets: € 4.00
Reduced: € 2.00
Oratory of San Bernardino
Piazza San Francesco
Information: tel. 0577 283048
Opening hours:
Open from: 01.03 to 02.11
Daily: 13.30 – 19.00
Tickets: € 3.00
For Italian and European Community
citizens from 18 to 25 years of age,
students and teachers from university
faculties that are not Humanities, partial
opening of the Museum.
Free entrance:
For Italian and European Community
citizens under 18 and over 65 years of
age; students with Carta dello Studente
(Student Card); journalists, groups of
students and teachers from Italian and
European Community schools; tour
guides and interpreters; members of
I.C.O.M.; disabled people with respective
companions; Erasmus Students
Tourist Board of Siena
Palazzo Pubblico, Piazza Il Campo, 1 - 53100 Siena - Tel. 0577 292128 – 178 [email protected]
Tourist Information Office Santa Maria della Scala, piazza Duomo 1, tel. 0577 280551, [email protected]
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