A lecture by Tessa Capponi
From the fifteenth century onwards, the banqueting table of the rich and powerful became increasingly a display of power and privilege. The table was no longer a convivial moment of union between the ruler and his subjects, but rather a moment of separation and exclusion. Few participated, most people were just there to watch. It had become a display of social privilege and political power, increasingly opposed to the real world of hunger and malnutrition.
This culture of ostentation and waste in Renaissance banquets cannot be understood outside of the reality of widespread hunger: they refer to each other and coexist with each other. Hunger as such was unknown to the privileged classes ... but not the fear of hunger which was ever-present.
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This lecture is sponsored by Bernadette Delaney