Synopses & Reviews
Gastronomy meets art in a new series, On the Table, edited by the provocative, genre-straddling Swedish writer Charlotte Birnbaum. The first publication is a new translation of a 17th-century text describing three spectacular banquets that greeted Queen Christina of Sweden when she visited Rome in 1668. Antonio degli Effetti was on the scene, and described all three feasts in their sumptuous glory, detailing the lavish preparations for the celebrations and the dining experience itself, designed by Bernini, no less The original text, dotted with quotations from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid, is placed in today's context by a foreword and two essays by Birnbaum. Was it dinner or was it 300-year-old performance art?
Synopsis
In 1668, Queen Christina of Sweden was greeted in Rome with three spectacular banquets that surpass all historical precedents and successors in the register of extravagant gastronomy. As the first publication of her series, On the Table, Charlotte Birnbaum presents Antonio degli Effetti's newly translated seventeenth-century text, which elaborately describes the three feasts in all their sumptuous and performative glory. The original text, dotted with quotations from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid, outlines the lavish preparations for the celebrations, the dining experience--designed by Bernini, no less--and the delectably boundless menus themselves. The text is contextualized by two essays and a foreword by Charlotte Birnbaum.