Cipriano Piccolpasso’s Recipe for the Transmutation of Matter
By Steve Wharton Certain recipes can tell us a great deal about the cultural and sometimes the technological contexts within which they were compiled and disseminated. In his mid-sixteenth century...
View ArticleThe Recipe Collection of the Last Medici Princess
By Ashley Buchanan Two summers ago in the state archive of Florence I discovered, filed under the heading of “miscellaneous Medici,” a simple sleeve which held a collection of over 200 recipes that...
View ArticleMedieval Makeup ‘Artists’. Painting Wood and Skin
by Marjolijn Bol What there is stays the same. That she can never change. Jan van Boendale (ca. 1280 – ca. 1351) For art...
View ArticleDyeing to Be Cured
By Ashley Buchanan Slipped within Anna Maria Luisa’s recipe collection is a small bound pamphlet that instructs the user how to tint or dye white marble various colors. In just sixteen pages, the...
View ArticleBoiling hot oil: on the assessment of temperature in late medieval processing...
By Indra Kneepkens Indra Kneepkens is a technical art historian, specializing in the materials and techniques of late medieval panel painting. She is currently finalizing her dissertation, which is...
View ArticleRice Bread in Sixteenth-Century Italy
By Lena Breda While scholars are broadening our understanding of food in early modern Italy, one curiously absent ingredient from such pictures is rice. Rice (or oryza sativa) is hypothesized to have...
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