Festa Rinascimentale (Festa na Renascen?a)

The Italian Renaissance is how the opening phase of the Renaissance (or Renaissance) became known, a period of great changes and cultural achievements that occurred in Europe, between the 14th century and the 16th century.

This period marks the transition between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age.

The initial reference is the region of Tuscany, centered on the cities of Florence and Siena.

It then spread to the south, having a very significant impact on Rome, which was practically rebuilt, for the most part, under the tutelage of the Supreme Pontiffs of the Roman Catholic Church who occupied the Chair of Saint Peter during the period, especially Sixtus IV.

It was a time of great cultural achievements, the appearance of names such as: Petrarch, Baldassare Castiglione and Machiavelli in literature; Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Rafael Sanzio and a whole range of great masters in the visual arts.

A period of great architectural achievements: the dome of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, by Filippo Brunelleschi in Florence and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome: and many others, far from the Gothic, come to light.

Historical background

The Italian Renaissance emerged in the middle of the 13th century, a period in which foreign invasions had plunged the region into great confusion and depression.

However, the ideas that forged it spread throughout Europe, fostering what would come to be called the Northern Renaissance and, even outside the continent, the English Renaissance.

The first steps towards the invention of the subject occur.

Until the mid-14th century, south-central Italy, which had been the heart of the Roman Empire, was impoverished.

Rome was a city in ruins and the Papal States were poorly administered, as the headquarters of the Papacy had been moved to Avignon, France. Sicily, Sardinia and Naples were for a long period under foreign rule.

The northern region, on the other hand, was going through a period of greater prosperity: Milan, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Ferrara and Venice.

Although important milestones in the history of culture can be noted, which brought to light important changes in relation to previous customs, the Renaissance did not represent a sudden turn from nowhere in relation to the Middle Ages.

On the contrary, it was yet another intensification, in a process of continued evolution, of an interest in things from Antiquity that had existed centuries before.

Its roots of humanism, naturalism, rationalism and idealism were laid down since Ancient Greece, around the 6th-5th centuries BC, and were never entirely lost sight of the Italians, on whose soil several relics of the Roman Empire, itself an heir of Greek tradition and the main agent of its first transmission to posterity.

In addition to monuments and some works of art, an important part of Greco-Roman artistic and philosophical literature was preserved throughout the Middle Ages through the work of copyists in various monasteries in Europe, and several classical principles were incorporated into Christian philosophical and religious thought.

Thus, even though Christianity obscured or adapted these principles to serve its doctrine, the classical world remained a living reference not only for Italians, but for several other European peoples.

On the other hand, Christianity introduced into Europe the notion of sin, the doctrine of hell and repudiated the human body, and with this a somewhat dark psychological atmosphere was created throughout the Middle Ages, making the common man consider himself a being abject and whose God was a furious and implacable tyrant, always ready to avenge offenses in the cruelest ways.

A tendency towards reform in this state of affairs began with the consolidation of the first universities.

Since the mid-11th century, Paris had become the largest theological and cultural center in Europe through the presence of great philosophers and pedagogues such as Pedro Abelardo and Hugo de S?o Vitor, and the activities of several schools, which merged to form, around 1170, the University of Paris.

In this academic environment, quite liberal and relatively independent of the Church, a humanist philosophy gained ground and the doctrine of purgatory was structured, which offered a route to escape from hell through a purifying stage preliminary to ascension to paradise.

At the same time, the Virgin Mary, as well as other saints, began to be considered great advocates of humanity alongside the justice of Christ.

In this process, the ancient tendency of the Christian faith to correct the sinner through fear and the threat of eternal damnation was mitigated by views that emphasized mercy rather than divine wrath, and that took more into account the fallibility inherent in human nature.

At the same time that humanism taught in schools of philosophy redefined fundamental principles of faith, it also enabled the absorption of elements of classical antiquity into art, loosened the rigorous ethics that had guided moral thought in previous centuries, and directed the cultural atmosphere towards greater secularization, favoring the shift of interest from the supranatural to the mundane and the human.

And it also rescued the value of the pure beauty of forms that had been lost since Antiquity, considering, as Saint Thomas Aquinas did, that Beauty was closely associated with Virtue, deriving from the coordination of the parts of an object among themselves in correct proportions. and the full expression of its essential nature.

There is no better illustration of this development than the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, God rejoices in all things, in each one according to its essence.

They are the epitome of the theological justification of naturalism.

All things, however small and ephemeral they may be, have an immediate relationship with God; everything expresses the divine nature in its own way and thus gains value and meaning for art too.

In this process of valuing the natural, the human body was especially benefited, as until then it was seen more as a despicable piece of dirty flesh and as the source of sin.

This aversion to the body had been a ubiquitous note in previous religious culture, and the representation of man excelled in a stylization that minimized his carnality, but now the symbolic schematism of the Romanesque and early Gothic was definitively abandoned to achieve in a short space of time a naturalism that has not been seen since Greco-Roman art.

The very figure of Christ, previously represented mainly as Judge, King and God, became humanized, and the adoration of his humanity came to be considered the first step towards knowing true divine love.

The achievement of naturalism was one of the most fundamental in all of Gothic, making possible centuries ahead the even more notable advances of the Renaissance with regard to artistic mimesis and the dignification of man in his ideal beauty.

Feasting in the Renaissance

Food is hardly a contemporary obsession although with the aid of television and the appeasement and subjugation to our most basic senses, printing houses have sold their soul to the masses by the relentless publications of an endless stream of questionable cook-books that have spawned the even more questionable modern day conundrum; the celebrity chef!

All of which pales to acute insignificance when compared to food and how it was presented in past centuries; our rather confused moral norms today prevent the decadence of a Roman orgy although the Etruscans outshone even the Romans when it came to throwing a party.

Italy has a proud and decadent history of playing with their food and although today a visitor might go into an orgasmic spasm having enjoyed the perfect mozzarella di bufala, five hundred years ago during any number of Renaissance feasts such a little thing would not have raised an eyebrow.

Indeed an Italian Renaissance feast was a time to show off and celebrate, berate and manipulate if not intimidate your guests as they were seduced or repelled and amazed by what was placed before them.

I've always considered the Medici Pope Clement VII as somewhat benign; the wrong person in the wrong job at the wrong time sort of scenario, however this simple (at least compared to his outrageous uncle Pope Leo X) man of God was as adaptable as anyone of his time to use food to impress, repel and threaten as was the case in May 1583 when he gave a feast in honor of the three sons of William V, duke of Bavaria in Castel St. Angelo in Rome.

A deliberately repulsive second course consisted of a poussin for each guest accompanied by a pastry shell stuffed with cockscombs, lambs testicles and gooseberries, large pies filled with kids eyes, ears and testicles and boned and stuffed calves heads.

The fourth course was a little aside of capon testicles and a salad of goat’s feet.

The Medici by virtue of their wealth and being based in Tuscany had the good fortune of being surrounded by excellent game meats, wines of acceptable quality, first rate olive oil and an abundance of vegetable, mushrooms and bird life; not to mention very handy access to the sea that saw fish and oysters as a constant on their feast menu’s.

Food as a political weapon to leverage an occasion was a Tuscan specialty regularly played out in the palaces of Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Arezzo and Livorno, whose tables groaned under the weight of magnificent, extravagant dinners that contemporary chefs can only dream of.

Which leads me to dishes of mussels and scallops in southern Tuscany, surrounded by rolling hills and close to the border with Umbria and not a fishing boat in sight, as I enjoyed recently at restaurant Canta Napoli, just outside of Cortona?

I was intrigued to sit and eat at a Tuscan restaurant that specializes in seafood (the owners originating from Naples) and discovered they do an excellent plate of peppered mussels while I found the scallops resplendent on the plate but a little tasteless.

Their spaghetti alle vongole was a little too salty but I will whip the cook into shape to get him to make it the way I prefer and thus carry on the tradition of extravagant dining here in Tuscany with the right balance of exotic foods and a stern hand!

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