Would you eat the soup in this painting?

Bollocks

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/17th-century_unknown_painters_-_The_Chef_-_WGA24061.jpg

Over to you.

Wikipedia thinks the stuff in the bowl is wine:

Kitchen scene of Bodegón. The laughing kitchen chef holding a large bowl of red wine in his hands stands behind a table on which all sorts of food is laid out: poultry, quails, a duck, a turkey, fish, a mackerel, cheese, pastries, bread rolls, sausages, hams, a pigeon, a sea bream and a pig's trotter. In the front a pack of cards and some loose change is shown.

I'd drink the wine but I wouldn't eat a soup prepared with the ingredients on display. call me a bad sport, but I don't fuck around with 17th century e. coli and tapeworms and salmonella

I mean obviously you are supposed to heat it up first. Nuke it and you’ll be fine.

i want to photoshop morrissey's head in

Whatever it is it looks much too brown to eat

I'd eat it. Look how proud he is of it.

looks like gravy, yes

I’d call it consommé and say yes

brown is the most delicious colour

the disorientation and confusion of meeting this guy irl would probably kill my appetite

if we're to imagine i was around in those days, sure, this is probably as good as it got

probably. the duck looks to be an eider, which I'd feel a little strange eating

enh i’ve eaten worse

I'm intrigued by the small pie and the items that look like bread rings on the right

It's also very, very difficult to make sense of the facial expression

“Oops look what I’ve done”

fionnland has it right; he looks deeply satisfied and pleased with himself, master of the table

i have that exact bowl on my desk right now. maresia stoneware, bet you ten pounds he bought it from habitat (rip)

Who knew Dick Butkus was such a gourmand?

depends

am i his neighbour or just a regular person using the computer to access the web?

joe rogan could not pay me enough money to sample paul f. soupkins' offered yield

wow, no

depends

am i his neighbour or just a regular person using the computer to access the web?

It has been offered.

Or has it? Is it just being displayed?

id eat just about anything on that table

Xp

That’s what I’m saying

update: no longer think the duck is an eider, but have no idea what it could be

Only one way to find out.

look at it and consult your Waterfowl ID?

that could also be all the blood he has drained from those poor aves

he's got that pre-hannibal look about him

I was wondering if the idea was he'd distilled all these different animals and plants into this one soup?

If on the other hand it's wine, then I suppose him holding it up and slightly tipped forward is the best way to display the wine in this context.

If on the other hand it's blood - then the poll becomes very interesting.

xps to imago

I think it’s some old domesticated variety like a huttegem or something (if it’s a flemish painting, then that’s likely to be what it is). it looks like a magpie duck tbh but they’re a relatively modern breed. who did the painting btw?

It says the painter is unknown on wikipedia. Looks Dutch rather than Spanish to me, it's more of a Vanitas painting than a Bodegón painting but couldn't place it in Holland over anywhere else in northern Europe

Painting style def looks Dutch, but you'd be hardpressed to find a Dutch painting from the 17th century with such "exotic" ingredients on the table

i'm not sure why wine would be consumed in a bowl? if anything it'd be those old school chalices

there are coins down there so maybe a coin expert can offer a better date for when this was painted

any coin experts on ilx?

gonna go with blood though

my inexperienced eye gets dutch vibes

spanish vanitas always gave me darker, less ambiguous vibes

this dude can be a butcher or johnny the homicidal maniac

ah so it’s a bowl of rotterdam termination sauce

xp to lbi

could it be a non-dutch painter working off dutch motifs?

like a minor french painter not good enough to chill with poussin et al

TBF i'd eat the soup in any painting.

nothing like a nice bowl of hieronymus borscht

ah so it’s a bowl of rotterdam termination sauce

― faust apes (NickB), Tuesday, January 16, 2018 1:12 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 <3 <3

infinity (∞), could def be. I'm not a big connoisseur but the 17th century Dutch painters had loads of apprentices and scholars (if only to earn a living), not just from Holland but from Belgium and France as well.

ah so it’s a bowl of rotterdam termination sauce

― faust apes (NickB), Tuesday, January 16, 2018 9:12 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:D

https://verhaal140.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/h10-de-aardappeleters.jpg

This is the 'Real Holland' version of dining 18th century style. The grimmer, the better. It's gauche up North. I don't see it in the painting that started this.

(I'd still eat the soup btw)

That picture just took me vividly back to being maybe nine years old and viewing this in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh on a school trip. Amazing clarity.

I remember a joke being told concerning van Gogh meeting his brother in the pub, and the brother offering him a pint...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh_IlJj0hqY

Hell no

the gold coins are spanish : https://goo.gl/images/aJ16Fk

better zoom here https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keukenstuk_(bodegón)_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-2962.jpeg

I understand what people are saying about the style but the guy looks like a minor character from Don Quixote and I'd say all things considered the setting is Spain whoever the artist

Vegetarian at the moment so no, not these days. But nothing wrong with a bit of czernina.

There is a specific historic ethno-sectarian context to this question that would get u assaulted on my island fyi

Why would a painter include a pack of cards, if not to say: "You're taking a gamble if you eat any of this guy's wares"?

Eat the man, sell the meat, pour the blood sacrifice on the altar.

ya habsburg spain makes sense come to think of it

they wanna put their money on display so they put a bunch of meat

old school ways dictated you be fat to look healthy and well-fed

and the empire had spread itself across half the globe so exotic birds on the table would also fit into this

the painting is like a humblebrag except they get a highly skilled nobody, probably paid him close to nothing, that can't catch a break, kinda like miguel de cervantes

man habsburg spain really was the original evil corporation wasn't it

i think his togs look more spanish than dutch (tho this is not my area of expertise)

every time i relook at the picture i want to eat the soup more, i think it may actually be reminding me of a soup i had in france when i was a kid which i guess i really liked (bcz i know exactly what i think it tastes like, tho can't quite parse this into a flavour or ingredients)

wait, which are the exotic birds there? there are pigeons in spain

or maybe just lots of meats

i'm not an ornithologist but the two bottom fellas don't look like regular pigeons

one looks like a duck and i don't think spain used ducks in its cuisine at that time at least, but ducks are/were a thing in latin america, with the muscovy duck (the little dude doesn't look like one though) originating from there

just spitballin

if the bowls are Delftware, then maybe this rich Spaniard is showing them off / if the orange was hard to get in Holland in 1610, maybe this rich Dutch guy is showing them off
Spanish coins: could still be a Dutch trader. Maybe the kind of cheese or pie (with a hole in the side?) is typically Spanish or Dutch?

this is like So Not Gonna Happen all over again but different

infinity, i was going by the wikipedia list upthread: "poultry, quails, a duck… a pigeon"

ducks are certainly native to spain -- you find some type of duck p much everywhere you find humans i think, as long as there's the right kind of water -- and duck is certainly a thing in arabic cuisine, which is not irrelevant to spanish cuisine

also didn't it take like 3 months to get from south america to spain? that duck is not an unrefrigerated 3-month duck

as per the description on wikipedia here: poultry, quails, a duck, a turkey, fish, a mackerel, cheese, pastries, bread rolls, sausages, hams, a pigeon, a sea bream and a pig's trotter (source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keukenstuk_(bodeg%C3%B3n)_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-2962.jpeg)

when i said exotic, i thought it was clear i was talking specifically about the aspects of spanish cuisine, not whether duck was native to spain

of course there are ducks everywhere, however duck in spanish cuisine is pretty much nonexistent, especially pigeon, because the latter is seen as the rats of the bird family

i see now the other fella down there is actually a turkey:

The turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, which is native to the Americas.

outside of the context of this painting, i think it would be important to know that duck is a thing in arabic cuisine (i did not know this), due to al andalus, etc., sure

but i think the inclusion of various ingredients popular in "new world" cuisine makes a difference

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastronom%C3%ADa_de_Espa%C3%B1a#Un_%C2%ABNuevo_Mundo%C2%BB_de_ingredientes

A mediados del siglo XVI entró el tomate en tierras españolas procedente de los aztecas (América), siendo Castilla el primer paso de entrada al resto de Europa, debido al monopolio que poseía sobre el transporte de productos provenientes del Nuevo Mundo.14​ Aparece en la lista de plantas provenientes del Nuevo Mundo del códice Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España.15​ La primera referencia al cultivo del tomate en España data del año 1777. Se debe al padre Gregorio de los Ríos, quien publica una obra titulada Agricultura de jardines, que trata de la manera que se han de criar, gobernar y conservar las plantas y todas las demás cosas que para esto se requieren, dando a cada una su punto.11​ Aparecen igualmente en 1608 documentos, en forma de listas de la compra para el Hospital de la Sangre en Sevilla, que indican la presencia de tomates y pepinos para la elaboración de ensaladas.16​ Entre 1645 y 1646 el pintor sevillano Bartolomé Esteban Murillo realiza una obra denominada La cocina de los ángeles, en la que se muestra la preparación de un plato con tomates.

Algunos autores fijan un cierto declive en la cocina española a comienzos del siglo XVIII con la subida al trono español de Felipe V,2​ debido quizás a un excesivo «afrancesamiento» de los gustos y las formas de cocinar. A pesar de ello existen autores como Francisco Martínez Motiño, que publica a finales del siglo XVIII un libro sobre repostería.17​ El gusto por comer queda reflejado en obras literarias de la época, como ciertos pasajes del Don Quijote de la Mancha, La Lozana Andaluza y otros.

sorry, the english version does not have these details

so it mostly says plants and herbs were being used after spain reached the americas, but it references the florentine codex, which also has a chapter dedicated to birds and ducks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florentine_Codex)

it says spanish cuisine was heavily influenced by the florentine codex and with philip v, spain's cuisine became heavily frenchified, which would make sense why pigeon and duck are there, which can be used to make pate

of course there are cultural errors in this painting, but this is probably because it was a poorly commissioned project given to a minor painter, i think this is what complicates things and why there are different theories as to why this was painted and what is being represented here. it looks like a failed attempt at something though

this painting doesn't seem to be too preoccupied with representing reality as it is, hence there are no rotting turkeys, but trying to send a political message, in my opinion, because being frenchified was, like what i quoted said, seen as a decline in spanish culture

voted yes cos got to stay hydrated and whatever is in the bowl is probably 1000% safer than any readily available contemporary drinking water

huh.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/2/1366/562283586_cc1dca74e6_b.jpg

how bout this one

maybe this is the 1610 version of the Tide pod challenge and he's going to eat EVERYTHING

yeah, i didn't get that's how you were meaning exotic, sorry

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

we all agree to abide by the results of the poll right? like if "yes" wins we have to eat the soup

There could be Spanish coins in Holland until Holland became independent, possibly that might be an angle. I don't know whether or how much coinage travelled between countries at that time. Given the pre-eminence of Spain it would make sense for Spanish coinage to be widespread, perhaps.

ya habsburg spain makes sense come to think of it

they wanna put their money on display so they put a bunch of meat

The thing with this whole still-life genre of painting is you're never quite sure if it's meant to be saying all this is vanity, or rather look at all this stuff we've got. The inclusion of the enigmatic chef really threw me for six in this particular case. There's no chef to be found in Josefa de Alaya's painting of the lamb, or in this typical vanitas from the Dutch School:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bb/7b/cc/bb7bcc24ff192d0779606e09d40abd58.jpg

^ This painting perhaps deserves its own poll.

https://media.mutualart.com/Images/2015_10/27/04/040630357/b6ea2fdd-d19b-41af-ad26-aec54c6065ce_570.Jpeg

i think his togs look more spanish than dutch (tho this is not my area of expertise)

It looks like a fairly standard doublet with baggy shirt underneath to me. His facial hair looks out of step with the Spanish fashion but that might just mean he isn't wealthy.

we all agree to abide by the results of the poll right? like if "yes" wins we have to eat the soup

Absolutely. Those who vote yes will receive a PM from me with instructions on where to find the soup.

I still think it’s blood

when I saw the soup, I didn't think "look at this decadent soup made of dirty water and blood. but what is the point. we're all going to die." I thought "no way would I ever eat that dingleberry's ass-tamarind chutney."

He might not like being called a dingleberry. Just saying.

i'd never vocalize that thought in his presence. i've seen ghostbusters ii.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

...wow!

would you eat the poll results

Is this an ilx first

Nope!

an important poll about HARPER'S magazine

Think the write in explanations should be treated as a tiebreaker

wanna end this prophylactic tour

Fucking hell. I've only gone and done it.

the look on that man's face, he knew the poll would end up like this. he's offering the soup only to mock us. we are doomed to remain frozen, forever on the threshold.

remember, your vote counts.

we need a thread for terrribly drawn/painted musical instruments