4. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The 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.
5. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
6. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod (detail)
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
7. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod (detail)
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
8. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod (detail)
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
9. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod (detail)
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
10. RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Feast of Herod (detail)
1633
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
11.
12. BELLINI, Giovanni
The 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.
13. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art,
Washington
14. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
15. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
16. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
17. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
18. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
19. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
20. BELLINI, Giovanni
The Feast of the Gods (detail)
1514
Oil on canvas, 170 x 188 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
21.
22. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’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.
24. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’s Feast (detail)
c 1821
Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
25. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’s Feast (detail)
c 1821
Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
26. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’s Feast (detail)
c 1821
Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
27. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’s Feast (detail)
c 1821
Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
28. MARTIN, John
Belshazzar’s Feast (detail)
c 1821
Oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
29.
30. VERONESE, Paolo
The 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.
38. STEEN, Jan
The 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.
39. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
40. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
41. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
42. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
43. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
44. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
45. STEEN, Jan
The Dissolute Household (detail)
1663-64
Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
46.
47. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant 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.
48. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
49. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
50. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, width of detail 25 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The bride is sitting under her bridal
crown; it is unclear which of the others
is the bridegroom.
51. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
52. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
53. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
54. BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast (detail)
c. 1567
Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
55.
56. MANDIJN, Jan
Burlesque 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.