This is a beautifully designed book, and the credit goes to Janet Wood, who has given us a distinctively shaped volume, eight by six inches, which rests comfortably in the hand. The layout of the book, the typeface and margins, are pleasing to the eye, as are the copious illustrations, mostly in color. One cannot begin to imagine an electronic version of this book nearly so inviting as this lovely tome. The enticing dust jacket, set against a field of salad green, features an illustration of Pieter Aertsen’s Market Woman at a Vegetable Stand (1567). Aertsen’s woman gestures with one hand toward two lovers seen embracing and kissing through a distant door as she extends her other hand toward a phallic gourd prominent among other comestible delectations. Thus, the tone is set for this delightful book. Aertsen’s market scene points toward a main course on the author’s menu: chapter 5, “Erotic Appetites,” where playful images of food evoking sex abound. Here we encounter mouth-watering and naughty works by Vincenzo Campi, Bartolomeo Passarotti, and Joachim Beuckelaer. Varriano elaborates upon the groundbreaking scholarship in this field by Bert Meijer and Barry Wind, who have written well on the sensuous humor of such art. He is also inspired by the wonderful Phyllis Bober, who would smile in delight at what we sample in this banquet of a book.

The author modestly says that his book is about the “Renaissance in Italy,” but in fact the scope of his work is much broader. He includes, for example, the kitchen art of Velázquez and fascinating examples of the Baroque banqueting table. He helpfully brings together a wide array of well-known images of food—for example, the jocular and life-affirming image of Priapus painted by Giovanni da Udine as part of Raphael’s loggia decoration in the villa of Agostino Chigi. The god is here presented as a giant phallic gourd, which penetrates and bursts open an overripe fig. Since the decoration of this loggia can be associated with the wedding of the patron, the abundance of allusions to food in the loggia festoons and the related image of the wedding banquet celebrating Cupid and Psyche intersect the genre of nuptial art, which has become an entire field in Renaissance studies. For, ever so much art pertaining to food is directly related to the celebration of marriages. Varriano also nicely emphasizes the well-known confection by Andrea del Sarto in the shape of the Florentine Baptistery, wittily fashioned from sausages, parmesan cheese, and marzipan, and he considers countless other familiar works that are associated with food. We might almost say that this book puts Cellini’s famous saltcellar in context. And doesn’t Piero di Cosimo’s popular Discovery of Honey (ca. 1499), when we stop to think about it, present an important moment in the history of food and cooking?

In addition to these and other well-known examples of art related to food, Varriano introduces delights less well known—for example, the Arch of Vigilance illustrated in Francesco Orilia’s Il zodiaco, over, idea di perfettione di prencipi. Here we behold an arch formed from a superabundance of hams, sausages, roast piglets, and, above all, cheeses. More than merely an allusion to Serlio’s rustic architecture, the image is a parody of Serlio, if not a farce—an almost Brueghelian feast for the eyes. It is a reminder of the fact that so much art about food is comic.

Varriano, who is erudite, has researched his subject carefully. He obviously takes pleasure in his subject and presents his findings in a pleasing way, which is no small thing in a field where pleasure is too often swept under the table, or conveyed most unpleasantly in tones of pomposity. It is impossible to do justice to the range of subjects that Varriano treats. He writes about cookbooks in the tradition of Apicius’s classic work; he discusses the diets of artists, for example, Leonardo and Pontormo; he presents the shared needs of cooks and painters, who use oil and eggs (and let us not forget Vasari’s Piero di Cosimo boiling and eating vast numbers of eggs!); he discusses the great sugar statues at banquets; he considers the sumptuous iconographies of great dinners; he treats inevitably the variety of foods on the tables of Renaissance images of the Last Supper; he writes about the geography of cooking in a discussion that nicely intersects recent considerations of the geography of art history; he even makes a nod toward the recent development of what is called neuroarthistory; he also suggestively compares various cookbooks to books about art. Varriano effectively relates Bartolomeo Scappi’s fascinating Opera dell’arte del cucinare to Vasari’s monumental “lives” of the artists. We must not, however, confuse Bartolomeo Scappi with Bartolomeo Sacchi, otherwise known to us as Platina, the papal librarian who was himself the author of a cookbook, also discussed here.

The considerable and undeniable value of Tastes and Temptations resides in Varriano’s focus on a subject that we almost take for granted: images of food in art. We all know Crivelli’s vegetables, Arcimboldo’s representations of fruits and fishes, Caravaggio’s voluptuous still-lives, and countless other examples. Varriano heightens our focus on such images by relating the arts of painting and sculpture to the art of cooking, in which the visual impression of food and the skill of preparing such food are closely linked to the skill and visive virtues of the plastic arts. He encourages us to make connections, to link portraits and devotional images, tableware, utensils, and treatises. By shining a bright light on food and the preparation of food in the visual arts and literature, Varriano approaches the recent emphasis in art history on anthropology. He thereby prompts us to think about the splendors of the kitchen in relation to the splendors of Renaissance attire, jewelry, and furniture—all subjects of great moment in art-historical studies. He reminds us that in the Renaissance we encounter not only Plato and Aristotle but also a philosophy that appreciates Epicurean delights. When Giulio Romano painted the story of Cupid and Psyche in Mantua, for example, he beautifully represented the artifacts associated with food and drink: a credenza loaded with gorgeous silver plates and glassware, all of which are artfully designed.

The Renaissance specialist will perhaps object that Varriano has not included this important text or that important work of art pertinent to his subject. But such carping would miss the point of this brief and highly suggestive book, which asks us to delight in the sampling of works discussed here and to think further about the topic. This book is in effect a series of prolegomena to much further discussion and thought. It will prompt us to ponder more fully what he speaks of as “ut pictura coquina.” In other words, “as is painting, so is cooking.” Or, “as in cooking, so in painting.”

Where there is good food there is good drink—a subject that Varriano touches on here and there. His image of Caravaggio’s Uffizi Bacchus offering the viewer a glass of wine makes us think about the ubiquity of the grape and indeed of wine in Renaissance art. All those statues or paintings of Bacchus (who can even count them all?) in which the god of the vine offers us a cup of wine or a bunch of grapes lead us back to the banqueting table. But that is not all. Think of the various Renaissance Bacchanalia that we know so well: pictures by Bellini, Dosso Dossi, and Titian, which feature delicious fruits and fine wines and, even in one case, a river of wine. In the spirit of such images I say, Salute, John Varriano!