the greats feasts in paintings

The greats feasts in paintings

RUBENS, Peter PaulThe 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.

RUBENS, Peter PaulThe Feast of Herod1633Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cmNational Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

RUBENS, Peter PaulThe Feast of Herod (detail)1633Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cmNational Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

BELLINI, GiovanniThe 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.

BELLINI, GiovanniThe Feast of the Gods1514Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cmNational Gallery of Art, Washington

BELLINI, GiovanniThe Feast of the Gods (detail)1514Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cmNational Gallery of Art, Washington

MARTIN, JohnBelshazzar’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.

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

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

VERONESE, PaoloThe 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.

VERONESE, PaoloThe Marriage at Cana1563Oil on canvas, 666 x 990 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris

VERONESE, PaoloThe Marriage at Cana(detail)1563Oil on canvas, 666 x 990 cmMusée du Louvre, Paris

STEEN, JanThe 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.

STEEN, JanThe Dissolute Household1663-64Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cmMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York

STEEN, JanThe Dissolute Household (detail)1663-64Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cmMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York

BRUEGEL, Pieter the ElderPeasant 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.

BRUEGEL, Pieter the ElderPeasant Wedding Feastc. 1567Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

BRUEGEL, Pieter the ElderPeasant Wedding Feast (detail)c. 1567Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

BRUEGEL, Pieter the ElderPeasant Wedding (detail)c. 1567Oil on wood, width of detail 25 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The bride is sitting under her bridal crown; it is unclear which of the others is the bridegroom.

MANDIJN, JanBurlesque 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.