Catherine M Nutting
Book Review
Claudia Goldstein. Pieter
Bruegel and the Culture of the Early Modern Dinner Party. Ashgate (Surrey,
UK, 2013), 188pp. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6732-2. $98.96 (USD).
1> Claudia
Goldstein’s book links Pieter Bruegel’s peasant paintings with the sumptuous displays
of wealth characteristic of the Early Modern dinner party. In the 16th
Century, Antwerp and its environs were rebuilding, and the art and luxury items
commissioned for the domestic interior had to help construct their patrons’
evolving identities. Goldstein combines ideas about conspicuous consumption and
the performativity of art and material culture to argue that the dining room,
the most decorated space in the 16th-century Antwerp mansion, was
intended to communicate wealth and prestige. To paraphrase Goldstein’s words,
“Dinner parties are described in literature from the ancients to Erasmus as
intellectual gatherings where conversation is inspired by the images on the
walls and by fellow guests, and where visual and literary references are the subject
of lively, but serious, banter” (…) but by mid-century the “wealthy non-noble
class that dominated the city” was “not as curious about humanist pursuits,”
resulting in social rather than intellectual themes for hosted dinner parties
and their accoutrements. (p4)
2> In
the first of five chapters, Goldstein discusses the case of Flemish Councillor
and art collector, Jerome de Busleyden (c1470-1517), whose intimate dining room
set the scene for a lively fellowship of Antwerp humanists and travelling academics.
In particular, the mansion that Busleyden had built in the city of Mechelin
contains a small heated room, or stoove,
entered off the large banqueting hall. Paintings of the banquets of Tantalus
and Balthazar mark this space as a dining area, while the fire-related scenes
of Phaeton and Mucius Scaevola perhaps pointed to the room’s cosy temperature,
heated through its proximity to the kitchen. Many of the original wall
paintings in Busleyden’s stoove
survive, and Goldstein draws on period correspondence, for example by
Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More and Pieter Gillis, to argue that these
classical images visually asserted the room’s purpose: that the 16th-century
humanists model their friendly conversation on that of the classical convivium.
3> Chapter
2 is a close look at the 16th-century dining room of Jan Noirot who,
despite being on the road to bankruptcy, refused to sell his five Bruegel
paintings. Noirot was Master of the Antwerp Mint, an impressive site of
metallurgy workshops, staff domiciles, and civic offices, and the headquarters
of the Mint Consortium that linked the mints of Flanders, Bruges, Holland, and
others. The fascinating aspect of Jan Noirot’s unfortunate bankruptcy in 1572
is that it resulted in a room-by-room inventory and several sworn testimonials
that are preserved in Belgian archives. These show that Noirot’s dining room
boasted expensive linens, crystal glasses, gilded tableware, and four of his
fifty paintings, including Pieter Bruegel’s Winter
Landscape, Peasant Kermis, and Peasant Wedding.
4> According
to Goldstein, Noirot was less interested in seriously recreating the humanist
intellectual programme than in maintaining the appearances of wealth and social
status, and the dining room was the preferred location to perform this façade,
a theme she expands upon in Chapter 3. This short chapter, “The Dinner Party as
Performance,” applies foundational performance theory to the table-plays that
were enjoyed at Early Modern banquets and special events. Goldstein describes
two in particular, “A Peasant with Eggs” and “Big Hunger and Good Appetite.”
Many of these 16th-century table-plays had peasants as their
subjects, as did Noirot’s Bruegel paintings, and Goldstein situates them within
the “world turned upside down” trope that could offer viewers entertainment and
a sense of superiority. Having the Bruegel paintings as a backdrop to his
gatherings allowed Noirot to “perform” an elevated economic status.
5> Chapter
4 considers the varied material culture of the 16th-century Antwerp
dining room. It looks closely at stoneware and pewter drinking jugs from the
Antwerp Museum Vleeshuis, and at the fopglazen
crystal that was designed for drinking games. These and such domestic objects
as the hearthware and table bells preserved in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh
would have set the backdrop for the Early Modern construction of identity
within the domestic interior. As Goldstein explains, the audience for these
mugs, spoons, salt cellars, and painted tiles was a shifting target. The
domestic interior is a complex and dynamic environment, the material of which
can be repositioned and repurposed to communicate various interests and
complicated identities.
6> The
final chapter, “Antwerp and Beyond: Envisioning the Early Modern Dining Room”
applies Goldstein’s theme of performative material culture to the homes of
three merchants in Antwerp as well as four country houses in the suburbs. Many
of these Italianate villa-style speelhuys
or “playhouses” were built or refurbished between the 1542 Dutch attacks on
estates around Antwerp, and the disastrous 1585 closing of the port of Antwerp.
Goldstein shows that 16th-century residents of Antwerp placed great
store in social events, wedding feasts, and all manner of parties, enjoying
socializing in their leisure time. The dining room was a prime location for
receiving guests, and its paraphernalia contributed to the festive air while
simultaneously highlighting the prestige of the hosts. One example of this is
the disguised family portraits by Marten de Vos in Gillis Hooftman’s dining
room, but people also signalled their social allegiances through classical
images, paintings and sculptures of the Virgin and saints, portraits of foreign
or local leaders, and other visual markers. (p129) The book concludes with a
mention of the visual language that Flemish artists exported internationally,
focusing on paintings of food sellers, these images of carefree abundance
serving as cultural currency when displayed in domestic dining rooms in
combination with luxury objects.
7> In
Pieter Bruegel and the Culture of the
Early Modern Dinner Party, Goldstein has taken on an important topic. The
production and consumption of visual culture in Early Modern Antwerp would
increasingly influence other artistic traditions, including the Dutch Golden
Age, as Flemish artist families fled war and poverty, taking their talents and
knowledge with them. Goldstein profitably reconsiders the 16th-century
reception of images in the light of diverse patron motives and the performative
function of material culture itself. However, this potentially fruitful
approach would have been better supported through further analysis. For
example, to characterize Bruegel’s patrons as opportunistic and self-serving
(p5, 145) arouses the reader’s interest in further explanation. A positive
(patronage of worldly goods) does not always prove a negative (disinterest in
humanist intellectual discourse). Identity is so complex, and reasons for
collecting are so multifaceted, that delineating household contents does not
provide sufficient evidence for the claim that patrons were interested almost
solely in appearances. Including a Conclusion might have allowed Goldstein more
scope to bring her arguments home. An intriguing aspect of the book is the
information in the detailed object lists and other archival documents, which
raise many fascinating questions. One interesting example is the section on
Noirot’s wife, where Goldstein shows that different members of a household
could have divergent relationships with domestic objects. Students of the Early
Modern domestic interior will also be served by the bibliography’s inclusion of
the secondary literature going back to the 1950s. Goldstein’s descriptions of
the splendour and abundance of the Antwerp domestic scene are a feast for the
reader’s mind. Her beliefs that meanings are multivalent, that material culture
is activated through its display and use, and that dinner guests can be
explained in part through performance theory, make The Early Modern Dinner Party a convivial read.
_____
Catherine Nutting is an instructor at the Vancouver Island
School of Art, a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Victoria,
and a Research Fellow at UVic’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. Her
current research and teaching projects include Early Modern Italian and Flemish
art and visual culture; the convergence of art practice and theory; and
historical and contemporary World Arts.
_____
APPOSITIONS:
Studies in
Renaissance / Early Modern Literature & Culture,
http://appositions.blogspot.com/,
ISSN: 1946-1992,
Volume
Seven (2014): Genres & Cultures
_____
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