If you’ll allow me, I’d like to start this blogpost with a little thought exercise. You’re welcome to just do this in your head or write down what you think of on a pad and paper if you’d like. You can close your eyes or keep them open, getting comfortable in your seat. Take a deep breath and clear your mind.
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I want you to think of a meal. It can be any meal – your everyday dinner with the family, a quick snack break between the many activities in your day, or it can be the celebratory feast of a special day – a holiday or otherwise. Focus on the image – it can be a memory or an imagined meal.
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And now I want to know: what does the table in front of you look like? Is it a holiday banquette, lined with a fine tablecloth and the best silverware, dotted with flowers and pitchers of special beverages? Or is it a simpler affair – just a seat at the counter with day-to-day dishes atop a place mat or, is there even a table? Are you at a bar or a café? What do you smell? The savory unctuousness of a long-simmering dish in the oven, awaiting its moment of “oohs and ahhs”? Or is it something sweeter, homier – like the sharp warmth of morning coffee or the freshness of a crisp apple, just sliced for an afternoon snack? I want you to focus on these sights and smells until you can almost taste them, and then take one last look at the meal all around you: the people as much as the food. And now tell me, how does this change how you understand this meal, this memory, this imaginative act?
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Thank you for going on that little journey with me. Continuing on my discussion from yesterday, it is exactly this last question I asked you that I want to reframe in connection to Picart’s print: how does focusing on food change how we understand a text (a book, a film, a piece of art)? My argument is, probably unsurprising, quite a lot.
Returning to the context of Picart’s print, we’ve already discussed his tendency to visually present Judaism in a way that was not as seemingly neutral, even positive, as many scholars believe. This is as true when it comes to the cover of his series, as Samantha Baskind discusses, as much as in regard to his differential and much more infrequent treatment of the Portuguese Jews’ Ashkenazi coreligionists in Amsterdam. To quote Baskind yet again: “odd that the Ashkenazim should appear so infrequently, because by the mid-eighteenth century the balance of Amsterdam’s Jewish population had changed: of 13,000 Jews in Amsterdam, 10,000 were east European” (Baskind 42). In that way, as I’ve well established in previous posts, we can’t take Picart’s imagery as totally neutral.
The Sephardim, again.
The comparably “uncouth” German (Ashkenazi) Jews, represented here in a wedding scene in Picart’s series.
But picking up on my last post, and focusing on food in particular, can add even further nuance to the scholarly discussion of Picart’s work – not to mention, offers critical clues into if there existed a coherent sense of “Portuguese Jewish cuisine” at all. Turning back to the print (the version taken on my iPhone naturally ;) ). I’d like to just that: focus on the food. There is a variety on the table, but the table isn’t overly laden. In the very center sits a dish that almost looks empty; to the right of the empty-looking dish, there’s a mass of purple and pink, dotted with circles; to the left, a green shaggy tangle of something. Just below sits a recognizable sight to anyone who has been to a seder: a dish with an egg (presumably hardboiled) and a shankbone. The most unfamiliar item on the table, surprisingly, is the matza: what looks like a half-circle of it with elongated holes sits casually to the right of a silver pot, diagonally oriented across the table from what could be its other half in the hands of the man at the head of the table, breaking off another piece to hand to what seems to be his wife. In the corner, near the fire, it is possible to see more matsa (especially in the photo I took, it must be said), swaddled in a blanket and tucked in a basket. The abundance of matsa, the richly appointed silverware, and the clothed table all indicate the wealth of this family, even at this early stage in the meal. This is further emphasized by their fashionable, well-tailored clothing and the presence of our friend in the low bench at the forefront of the image, most likely a servant with roots in a Dutch or Portuguese colony (indicated by his turban and slightly darker skin — perhaps hinting at an “exotic” origin — shout out to Vonnie for her theory about him!), pulling wine out of barrel of water where it was kept cool.
The numbered dishes.
Our mystery friend with the wine.
The swaddled matsa.
Again, all the signs here point to the “model minority” representation of Portuguese Sephardim that was so common in Picart’s renderings of their public life as much as in the work of other contemporary artists, who as Baskin shows also employed a naturalistic style in their depictions of the community’s synagogue and public rituals. But focusing on the food offers some nuance to this idea, put forth by Baskin and others. For example, it is notable that Picart includes a key for his reader, numbering each dish and explaining its contents. He includes an explanation of the hard-boiled egg, the bitter herbs (the green stuff), a delicious-sounding charoset (the purple stuff: figs, apples, almonds, cinnamon – all cut and cooked together), and – of course! – the matsa, what he notes is “the bread of Passover.” More than its informativeness, I am struck by the fact that Picart numbers and explains the food particularly – almost as if it is the only aspect of the image different enough to require explanation.
Picart’s text at the bottom of the image with a description corresponding to each numbered plate in the etching.
And while certainly the whole gestalt of the image communicates wealth, including the expensive fruits and nuts in the charoset, his depiction of them in a moment of breaking bread signals to me that Picart purposefully drew his viewer’s focus to the food for its communicative, boundary-hopping power. This feels all the truer knowing that Picart actually went to the house of a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish family, specifically that of Moses Curiel, to experience a seder firsthand. Even though Curiel was notably quite wealthy – Tirtsah Levie Bernbaum notes he was a merchant connected to Brazilian colonial trade and paid a large sum to lay the first stone of the Portuguese synagogue, the Esnoga – I am struck by the notably casual way Picart depicts them: handing bread to one another, crossing arms to hold a Haggadah together, looking at the man in the second chair from the left (presumably Curiel) to continue leading the story, the silverware arrayed as if it will just be used in the making of a Hillel sandwich. All details that make it feel, at least to me, like Picart is there in the room, just having gotten up to take a quick sketch of his hosts before rejoining them and grabbing a piece of matsa himself.
The aforementioned silver, and to the left, intertwined hands on the haggadah. To left below, the casually placed silverware.
This is how focusing on the food allows us to nuance what earlier scholars have claimed about this image and the Portuguese Sephardim it depicts. And it is the one in the set that has consistently been written about less in the scholarship than all the other, more public-facing representations of this community. And because of this I would argue that it offers a different way of understanding Picart’s relationship to his Sephardic subject -- not to mention it also provides a killer charoset recipe for next Passover ;) – which in studying Sephardic history, can often be as important as the primary source material itself.
There’s more to be said, but for now I will leave it here. More again tomorrow! In the meantime, feel free to let me know what meal you thought of during my little thought exercise down in the comments below or through a direct message. Besinhos (little kisses, a customary goodbye) from Lisbon!