A Feast for the Eyes

To read accounts of late medieval banquets by courtiers is to enter an enchanted world where live lions guard nude statues, gilded stags burst out in song, and twenty-four musicians play from within a pie. We can almost see the Church riding in on an elephant, hear the clock sound from within a glass castle, taste the fire-breathing roast boar, and smell the rose water cascading in a miniature fountain. Separated today into the visual, performing, and culinary arts, these multimedia works united in the period in a single category, the entremet, named for its position entre mets or between the dishes. Entremets not only were produced through the collaboration of artists in many fields but also lured audience members to participate. A Feast for the Eyes is the first book-length study to focus on the court banquets of northwestern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and to trace their significant role in visual art.