These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things

It’s no surprise that food has long been a favorite subject for artists.

Everyone eats, so everyone can relate to food. It’s one of our greatest pleasures, and so we love to gaze at it, imagining what that ripe pear or voluptuous donut might taste like. It is endlessly diverse in its colors, sizes, and shapes, easy to spice up with religious or political symbolism, and serves as a proud expression of cultural identity. Food also makes a great model—accessible, never needs a break, doesn’t create drama, and if it rots before you’re done, just switch it out.

The Getty collection is a veritable packed pantry of intriguing food-related artworks, and we were curious to know what curators in the departments of paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and sculpture and decorative arts would pick as one of their favorite food-related objects.

Here, in their own words, is what they chose, and why.

Anne Woollett, Curator of Paintings, Getty Museum: A painting that preserves a now-rare fruit

This year Getty boosted its holdings of medlars, a fruit that enjoyed tremendous popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods but now ranks among the most obscure of crops. In Still Life with Assorted Fruit (about 1622) above, a new addition to the Museum’s collection of Dutch paintings, the still-life specialist Pieter Claesz. (1597/98–1660) positioned a pair of coppery-brown medlars in the foreground of an array of vibrantly hued fruits arranged like precious gems across a pressed plain-damask tablecloth.

The food depicted by Claesz. in this early example of a fruijtagie, a still life focused primarily on assorted fruits, was readily available in the early 17th-century Netherlands. Summer treats included delicate strawberries (left) and vivid red cherries (right), shown in imported blue-and-white Chinese porcelain dishes. The polished pewter platter reflects the deep hues of autumnal delights: white and red grapes and two golden apples. Whole and broken hazelnuts lie scattered across the table. At the center, a single walnut leans against the platter.

Winter, in the form of medlars, takes center stage at the front edge of the tabletop under the overturned serving spoon. The fruit, from a shrubby tree in the rose family, appears late in the season but is hard and sour straight from the branches. After bletting—a process of decay achieved by storing the fruit in a cool dark place for about two weeks and allowing the sugars to come to the surface—they resemble overripe apples. Claesz.’s medlars appear smooth and firm, so they have not yet been bletted. Thus, to his earliest viewers they offered the promise of a sweet winter treat.

The sugary flesh of bletted medlars could be consumed in various ways. Slightly gritty in texture with large seeds, ripened medlars have been likened to a rich, savory, spicy pear. The flesh could be eaten directly with a spoon, in the same way some persimmons are consumed today. With the skin removed, the flesh could be sliced and eaten with cheese or made into jam. A 16th-century English recipe calls for cooking the flesh with egg yolks and seasoning the paste with cinnamon, ginger, and sugar to make a pie filling.

Medlars were a favorite still-life subject for artists. Claesz.’s predecessor, Joris Hoefnagel, similarly displayed these characteristic features and the richly hued color of the winter fruit in Medlar, Poppy Anemone, and Pear of Getty’s Mira calligraphiae monumenta (Model Book of Calligraphy; Georg Bocskay, scribe).

Stephanie Schrader, Curator of Drawings, Getty Museum: A beautiful drawing about an ugly sin

In Allegory of Gluttony (1590) by Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627), a haggard woman with sagging breasts bites rapaciously into a chicken leg, torn from the pullet she holds. A snaggletooth unattractively projects over the meat she shoves into her mouth, reinforcing the inappropriateness of her bare-handed eating. To her left, a young man sits perched atop a cask, drinking a colossal glass of wine. Beneath these figures, a wild boar rests its snout on the hindquarters of another animal.

The scene is set within a vaulted room—perhaps a cellar. Game birds, in the form of a plucked turkey and goose, hang from the ceiling. On the right wall, wheels of cheese are piled on a sharply foreshortened shelf. The cramped composition pushes all the food and indecorous eating and drinking into the foreground. There is no escaping the moral message—don’t commit the ugly sin of gluttony.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the drawing is the rich and highly worked technique, with liberal gold heightening. Gold as a decorative highlight is most visible on the bottom rim of the large beaker. This level of finish suggests that the drawing was intended as a work of art in and of itself—a collector’s object for private study and wonderment.

This sheet belongs to a famous series by the artist of the Seven Cardinal (or Deadly) Sins, of which five others are known: Lust and Sloth (Musée du Louvre, Paris), Pride and Envy (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hanover), and Avarice (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). The drawings all demonstrate two parallel obsessions of late 16th-century court culture: on the one hand, luxury and refinement; on the other, sin and violent damnation as driven by the fervent devotion of the Counter-Reformation.

Originally from northern Italy, Ligozzi often presented himself as a foreign artist, emphasizing the non-Florentine character of his work. In Gluttony, as in the other surviving drawings from the series, he did so by borrowing motifs from prints by 16th-century Northern printmakers such as Hendrick Goltzius and Crispijn de Passe, who popularized this type of moralizing imagery in the Low Countries. His audience—connoisseurs and collectors of works on paper—would have recognized and appreciated these playful quotations.

Larisa Grollemond, Associate Curator of Manuscripts, Getty Museum: An illumination that lauds pretzels

Getty’s manuscript collection contains an image of the Last Supper painted by a German artist around 1030–40 in Regensburg, Bavaria, as part of a book used to celebrate the Christian Mass. Set against a shimmering gold background, the scene depicts Christ and his disciples seated at a table laden with food: a fish in a bowl, a goblet of wine, and pieces of bread scattered across the surface. The fish was a common symbol for Christ, and the bread and wine were associated with the Eucharist. But what about that curiously shaped food item sitting at the table’s right corner? Wait, is that a pretzel?

Indeed it is, and one of the earliest depictions of a pretzel at that. Pretzels had likely been invented a few centuries earlier, and by the time this image was created, they had taken on significant Christian symbolism. Medieval pretzels were made using only flour, water, salt, and yeast, and because of this simple recipe, they could be eaten during the Lenten season of penance and fasting, when Christians did not partake of animal products, including eggs, lard, milk, and butter.

A pretzel’s shape may also have been symbolic for medieval Christians: the German word Brezel might ultimately derive from the Latin brachia or bracchiola, meaning “little arms,” a reference to the twist of the dough imitating folded arms. (Praying with arms crossed over the chest, with hands on opposite shoulders, was a more common religious posture in medieval times versus today.)

By the mid-15th century, pretzels were a medieval staple and had also become an emblem. German bakers adopted it for their hanging shop signs, a form so legible that customers could find a bakery by this silhouette alone, and bakers’ guilds used it in their crests. The pretzel became a visual shorthand for the professional identity of baking.

Later folklore surrounding the pretzel, especially popular in Germany and passed down through American Pennsylvania Dutch communities, layered on the idea that the pretzel’s three openings evoke the Trinity. Though not documented during the Middle Ages, that association is perhaps best understood as a devotional bonus.

While nowadays pretzels have perhaps lost their theological connotations and are more commonly associated with snacking at ballparks and on street corners, nearly a thousand years after the artist of the Getty’s Last Supper painted one into biblical history, the humble pretzel remains immediately recognizable.

Anne-Lise Desmas, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Getty Museum: A masterpiece of a mustard pot

Getty’s decorative arts collection includes many objects associated with dining, from plates and tureens to sugar casters and sauceboats. Among these works, some of the smallest are mustard pots, one of which I find especially striking for the playful exuberance and vivid colors of its decoration.

Standing just four inches tall, this cylindrical earthenware pot features a spout for pouring its contents and an attached handle fitted with a pewter mount that allows a user to lift the lid. It was made in 1745–49 in Moustiers, France, one of the leading centers of the production of French faience (tin-glazed earthenware) during the 18th century.

Among the town’s several manufactories, the most successful was founded in 1738 by Joseph Olerys (1697–1749) and his brother-in-law Jean-Baptiste Laugier (1714–1765). The under-side of the mustard pot bears an ocher enamel mark with the interlaced letters “OL,” identifying their partnership. Beside this mark appears the letter “P,” the signature of Jean-François Pelloquin (1715–1775), one of the manufactory’s most accomplished painters.

Pelloquin’s talent is evident in the decoration that wraps around the body of the vessel and extends onto the lid and handle. The scene depicts the poet Orpheus charming the animals, a subject well suited to the artist’s lively brushwork and rich palette. According to Greek myth, Orpheus played the lyre with such magical sweetness that he tamed the animals that gathered around him. Beneath the spout, decorated with a large bird, Orpheus appears as a young man dressed in blue, seated on a small mound crowned with trees. He holds his lyre in his left arm while gesturing with his right hand toward the animals surrounding him.

The expressions of the beasts, their faces turned toward Orpheus, are remarkably animated. The lion lying on the left and tall stag standing on the right, for example, appear utterly captivated by the musician’s performance. The diversity of the creatures that are represented is extraordinary. Gathered not only beneath Orpheus but also around the body of the pot and on the lid, they stand upon small floating mounds. A closer look reveals a unicorn, ostrich, camel, cat, peacock, porcupine, and, quite surprisingly, winged snail.

Despite its diminutive size, this mustard pot is one of the finest works produced by the Olerys-Laugier Manufactory. The exceptional quality of its painting and the remarkable variety of animals depicted make it a miniature masterpiece. It is impossible to know who selected the decorative theme or why. Yet the subject invites a playful parallel: just as Orpheus enchanted animals with the harmony of his music, the finely prepared mustard once contained in this pot may have delighted diners by adding its own notes of flavor to the meal.