L'art Et La Table

Each era has built up its own image of food and table, reflecting its identity and ideals. Throughout the centuries, art has preserved these gastronomic representations, turning them into a genre, a document for the historian and a source of fantasy for the artist.

Through a thematic and chronological tour, this book offers a scholarly, detailed and educational overview of Western gastronomic traditions and practices, from Antiquity to the twentieth century. Frescoes, crockery decorations, illuminations, engravings, tapestries and paintings, as well as period texts, are reproduced, guiding the reader through the history of the table and cooking, their slow secularisation, and their ongoing tension between the necessary meal and the sumptuous spectacle.

From ancient Mesopotamia to the avant-garde of 'Eat Art', the practices and rituals, the ordinary day and the exceptional feast, the lean and the fat, the sacred food and the delights of gourmandise are all revealed and richly illustrated.