[Sca-cooks] Michalangelo's Lunch

[Christine Seelye-King]

	Remember how we were talking about how you could always tell the SCA people
at a museum by the way they tried to crawl all over the items, stood there
sketching, had animated discussions about the finer points, etc. etc.? Well,
as a special treat for us employees, my boss arranged for us to get into the
High Museum of Art for a free showing of "The Private World of
Michelangelo - Drawings And Other Treasures From The Casa Buonarroti"
yesterday.  It is a collection of crafts, artistic practice sheets (you can
see one where he outlined a couple of nude forms in pencil, and then a
student has gone back over them in ink), plans for architechtural columns
and cornices, etc.  The one real find for me was when I turned a corner to
see a small piece of paper in a frame on the wall, with pictures of food
items on it.  When I got a closer look, I was amazed!  It was an envelope
that Michalangelo received in 1518, that he had then outlined menus on for
illiterate servants.  Here is the text from the blurb on the wall next to
it:
"Always frugal and often dealing with illiterate assistants, Michalangelo
sketched these three menus (for two, four, and six people) on the back of a
letter he recieved in 1518.  His annotations read "Two rolls, a pitcher of
wine, a herring, tortelli; four rolls, a pitcher of wine, a small quarter of
a rough wine, a plate of spinach, four anchovies, tortelli;  six rolls, two
fennel soups, a herring, a pitcher of wine."
Each item has a picture of it drawn next to it.  I sketched the whole thing,
and I wish I could post it, but don't have the technology right now to do
it.  (Yes, I stood there a really long time, came to within 6 inches of it-
but no closer, my lord got close enough for the guard to inhale sharply - ;)
The rolls are just circles, 2,4, and 6 of them.  The pitcher of wine has a
handle, the quarter of a rough wine ('en quartucco di bruscio') is a small
pitcher approximately a quarter of the size of the big one.  There are a
couple of fish outlined (herring = 'una aringa'), and a couple of bowls of
what must be salad, also a flatter plate that might be the spinach or the
tortelli.  The soup ('duo minestro di finochio') is shown in a large tureen
(footed), with something coming out of the bowl and hanging over the sides
(3 of them), I'm guessing it is fennel stalks used for decoration, and
possibly to be served with the soup.  The last reference to wine reads 'u
bochal di tondo', which the book states was probably a reference to wine
from the Calle Tondo, a local regional wine.  It is supposed that this last
one was added by one of Michalangelo's sculptural collaborators, Pietro
Unella (? I'm not sure of his last name), because his writing is all over
other daily expense account records, and Michalangelo himself was so frugal
that the finer wine might not have been his idea.
	As usual, he is presumably talking to cooks, so he gives no preparation
instructions.  I am guessing that the spinach would be a plate of raw
leaves, perhaps dressed with olive oil and salt. Maybe cooked lightly? My
lord conjectures that as herring is a cold water fish, it might be a
preserved item, bought in barrels, while the anchovies might be a fresh
'catch of the day' from the Mediterranean.  The bread ('pain dua', 'quatro
parni', and 'sie parni'), look like simple round rolls.
	It was great fun to find this record of an everyday lunch plan, and so well
documentable!  It gave me goosebumps.
	Christianna