Sugar and Show: Conspicuous Consumption in the Age of The Medici
Location
Wedgewood Conference Center, Room 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
1-10-2015 11:00 AM
Description
Fancy foods have long been used to demonstrate wealth, privilege, and power, nowhere more so than in the Renaissance courts of Italy and France. Sugar was the luxury ingredient par excellence, not merely due to its expense but also because of its sculptural properties. The ruling classes commissioned renowned artists and architects to create sugar sculpture and created whole place settings of sugar paste. Fashionable recipes both sweet and savory contained large doses of sugar. Some meals were made entirely of sweets. In the seventeenth century, as sugar lost its exclusivity, Europe’s powerful found new ways to show off their social status.
Recommended Citation
Krondl, Michael, "Sugar and Show: Conspicuous Consumption in the Age of The Medici" (2015). Humanities Symposium. 16.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2015/2015/16
Sugar and Show: Conspicuous Consumption in the Age of The Medici
Wedgewood Conference Center, Room 4094
Fancy foods have long been used to demonstrate wealth, privilege, and power, nowhere more so than in the Renaissance courts of Italy and France. Sugar was the luxury ingredient par excellence, not merely due to its expense but also because of its sculptural properties. The ruling classes commissioned renowned artists and architects to create sugar sculpture and created whole place settings of sugar paste. Fashionable recipes both sweet and savory contained large doses of sugar. Some meals were made entirely of sweets. In the seventeenth century, as sugar lost its exclusivity, Europe’s powerful found new ways to show off their social status.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Academic Lecture