The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) will host its first lecture of the 2013-2014 series, "Feast and Famine in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" this Friday, August 30, 2013.
Between the Dishes, and What Courtiers Found There
Christina Normore, Assistant Professor of Art History, Northwestern University
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, court banquets were lifted beyond the realm of everyday meals by the presence of what were termed entremets. Literally designating something between dishes, the category of the entremet mixed a range of media usually separated today, equally encompassing cooking, sculpture, automata and live performances. The aesthetic response to this boundary crossing was usually described in terms of the wonderful or marvelous. This talk considers some of the ways in which the entremet and its attendant wonder allow us to rethink common assumptions concerning both the distinctions between media and the relationship between the secular and sacred in late medieval artistic production.
The lecture will be followed by an informal roundtable discussion with the speaker, and light refreshments will be served.
