Kenneth Bendiner’s Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present presents a novel survey of food imagery in many guises—as still life; market, kitchen, and genre scenes; abstractions; and even landscapes. Covering art from the past six centuries in the West, he emphasizes paintings, while including a few works in other media (manuscripts, fresco, watercolor, and sculpture). The well-chosen illustrations—ranging from the Limbourg Brothers’ January (1413–16) in the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, to two examples from 1996 by Wim Delvoye and Damien Hirst (Susan, Out for a Pizza—Back in Five Minutes—George and This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home, respectively)—provide the basis for his discussion. Bendiner proposes to explore in food paintings a “separate line of development that passes through the linear course of art history,” one that has more to do with social history than with the usual movements and divisions that art historians have established (8).

In the introduction, Bendiner provides a historical and theoretical framework for interpreting depictions of food. For example, he points to the continuing influence of ancient medical beliefs far into the nineteenth century, resulting in pairings of foods and cooking methods thought to be balanced and thus healthful. Eugène Delacroix’s Still Life with Lobsters (ca. 1826–27) depicts the cooked crustaceans beside dead game—a hare and a pheasant—along with hunting paraphernalia in a landscape. Bendiner suggests that this unlikely combination at least partly reflects theories concerning the healthful, balanced combination of the moist/cold with the dry/warm, theories that also influenced the gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The publication of Brillat-Savarin’s La Physiologie du goût in 1825, two years before Delacroix’s still life was accepted for the Salon, offers intriguing support for the lasting influence of such theories (12).

Noting that many religious subjects relate to food, Bendiner emphasizes the importance of the Garden of Eden and the Last Supper. He suggests that while the associations connecting the Fall of Man, eating, and hunger for knowledge could have imbued the subject of food with enormous importance in Western culture, ironically (perhaps because of the association of food and Original Sin), “food imagery in the arts has always ranked low, a matter of vulgar comedy or anti-heroic ordinariness” (12). Arguing that the “utter commonness” of food in our lives has contributed to the traditionally low status of food paintings for theorists, he finds advantages here, “a certain freedom in the margins of art—where experiment and indulgence can operate” (23).

Bendiner, however, sees in his subject a pervasive expression of material contentment and deep physical satisfaction. He relates this pleasure to fetishism, writing that, “Food illusionism differs from the fetishism of Marx and Freud in that it is not an illusion or a self-deception. When a lamb becomes a lamb chop, we see a truthful transformation of life into dead matter; it also becomes small, manageable, compliant, a thing at our disposal” (27). Bendiner returns to this theme repeatedly, as when he writes of how depictions of food bring us face to face with our material circumstances and seem to provide “a feeling of control of our world, a sense of mastery” (43). The fact that food is crucial to human survival also can imbue food imagery with seductive power, evident, for example, in market displays of overwhelming abundance as well as in still lifes like Adriaen Coorte’s Asparagus (1697), in which the vegetable has an almost spiritual translucent beauty.

Another aspect of the seductive power of food imagery is its erotic appeal. Bendiner reminds us that the apple was imbued with great sexual power in both sacred and secular subjects, for instance, the Fall of Man and the Judgment of Paris. He links fruit, fornication, and mortality in Mary Cassatt’s Baby Reaching for an Apple (1893). In Frida Kahlo’s Fruits of the Earth (1938), fruits and vegetables are surely more than a salute to Mexican produce. Bendiner often comments on erotic subtexts and undercurrents, and in the final chapter he muses on food as the subject “that is chosen to represent material lusts” (205).

Bendiner describes his organizational scheme as charting “the passage of food from purveyor to belly and beyond” (7). The book’s four chapters proceed from “The Market,” to “Preparing the Meal” (with a sub-section on The Kitchen Still-life), to “Meals,” and finally to a consideration of “Decorative and Symbolic Food.” Chapter 3, “Meals,” is further divided into sections on The Noble Meal; Informality; Dutch Still-life; Oysters; The Order of Courses; Restaurant; Picnics; Coffee, Tea and Chocolate; Celebrations; Time; and, finally, Poverty, Charity, Prayer and Children. In the concluding chapter, on Decorative and Symbolic Food, Bendiner discusses the interpretation of images in which formalism and symbolism are interwoven, addressing a range of issues. Despite the clarity of these titles, placement can seem arbitrary. Scanning the illustrations in the section on The Kitchen Still-life, for instance, we find not only Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin’s The Ray (1728), which depicts foodstuffs ready for preparation, but also Edvard Munch’s Self-portrait with Wine Bottle (1906) and Edward Hopper’s Automat (1927), both of which I would have expected to find instead in the Restaurant section.

Bendiner’s survey seems aimed at a non-specialist reader seeking an overview of food in social contexts; he acknowledges as much when he informs the reader that Paul Cézanne represents a movement called Modernism (103). Readers looking for a discussion that reflects deeper engagement with complex issues may find the level of discourse wanting. A case in point is Bendiner’s discussion of the Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Mary and Martha by Diego Velázquez (ca. 1618). In a footnote, he documents the ongoing debate over the nature of the scene depicted in the square area at upper right, showing Christ, Martha, and Mary, and its relationship to the two figures and still life in the foreground. His discussion, however, does not address the ambiguities at the heart of Velázquez’s conception. Alerting readers to their importance would have yielded a more satisfying consideration of the painting. Bendiner’s commentary does, however, reflect the dual emphasis in this book, the image and its place in a social context, a venerable art-historical approach. He discusses the Velázquez along with other depictions of pre-nineteenth-century kitchens, which he describes as “dour and toilsome.” His characterization of the girl in the foreground as sad because she toils in the dark kitchen, excluded from the practice of the contemplative life, is valid but limited (81). Here and elsewhere his interpretation seems dominated by his organizational scheme at the expense of meeting an image on its own terms.

Bendiner places seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of food at the core of his subject because of their sheer number and influence. A key example is Pieter Claesz.’s Still-life with Crab and Lobster (1643), which presents an array of fine objects and delectable foods, appealing to eyes as well as appetites. A pocket watch, conspicuously placed on the plain dark table cover, is the clavis interpretandi, a reminder of the wisdom of moderation in the midst of plenty. The opposition thus established illustrates Simon Schama’s argument in The Embarrassment of Riches (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987) for a deep-seated cultural dynamic in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, created by the need to satisfy the demands of two opposing poles, appetite and restraint. While recognizing “the two sides of the coin,” Bendiner in effect rejects Schama’s argument, instead proposing that “the instructional aspect, the vanitas theme, merely gives a superficial sheen to the image.” He continues, “The title of Simon Schama’s book . . . An [sic] Embarrassment of Riches, seems to express the situation perfectly: a fine appreciation of earthly blessings—and some self-deprecating embarrassment about one’s enjoyment” (91). Discussing Claesz.’s lively but structured composition, Bendiner, evidently seeking a depiction of a conventional meal, sees the scene as disordered, going on to interpret disarray as suggesting “abundance, non-rationing, expansiveness, no need to conserve or order or count, but, instead, a complete surrender to needs and desires” (132).

Bendiner’s discussion of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Peasant Wedding (ca. 1568) is idiosyncratic. He writes that the paper crown above the bride’s head was “a touch probably meant to mock the whole occasion,” consistent with his view of Bruegel as a sardonic humorist who aimed to put peasants in their place (185). The paper crown, however, actually reflects a contemporary practice, and Bruegel’s many depictions of peasants are rich not only with verisimilitude but also humanist values. Imagining Bruegel as, in modern terms, “showing us a ludicrous trailer trash marriage celebration” seems off the mark (185).

The most persuasive interpretations depend not only on scholarship but also on keen observation and a sensitive reading of the image. I found Bendiner at his best in his discussion of Francesco Trombadori’s Still-life (1935). He looks long and thoughtfully, posing questions about the setting, considering the rationale for the depicted objects, musing about their function, concluding that, “The point here is that there is no true coherence of objects in this food painting.” His larger point is that “Trombadori’s image bears the dislocated character of twentieth-century modernism” (105–6). It was Cézanne’s still lifes that broke with the tradition of food imagery with overt social connections, introducing conceptions in which food could function as an independent, even non-edible, object governed by purely formal and expressive forces. Bendiner associates this disengaged vision of food with the “pervasive anomie” of the twentieth century (104).

Food in Painting presents the challenge of integrating a survey of a large and varied body of visual material with an equally important discussion of history and social context. In many cases, Bendiner privileges his own response to the image at the expense of situating it in those contexts. While this approach is theoretically defensible, it conflicts with Bendiner’s stated aims. Had he stated this approach at the outset, the imbalance would have been less problematic. In any survey, the more extensive the subject and the more numerous the examples chosen for discussion, the less substantial the treatment of individual works is likely to be. Had fewer works been selected, this book would have been valuable not only to readers interested in an overview of an intriguing subject but also to those looking for a more nuanced and scholarly consideration of these complex, often puzzling images. Bendiner comments on how depictions of food can reveal profound truths about the social and intellectual life of a period, yet he misses opportunities to develop this point. Jean-Étienne Liotard’s Chocolate Girl (1743–45), for example, not only illustrates the serving of liquid chocolate with a water chaser, but also offers a glimpse of la bonne societé in the 1740s, as an exquisitely poised servant dressed with the utmost care and style brings the costly morning drink to the master—or mistress—in a noble household. Similarly, in Fruit Market, Florence (ca. 1775), Johann Zoffany not “merely underscores the goodness of food” (52); rather, he reveals the dynamic among the social and economic haves and have-nots.

For most of us, depictions of food are engaging, even luscious and appetizing, and we are intrigued to see how people of other times and places have hunted, gathered, cooked, eaten, and honored this most basic fact of our lives. Bendiner’s most valuable contributions are assembling this fascinating visual banquet, offering a cultural history that is often surprising and delightful, and providing tools for further study of these remarkable depictions of the literal means of survival.