Body and Soul: The Battle between Carnival and Lent

Pieter Bruegel, Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

Bruegel’s Battle between Carnival and Lent will star in one of the presentations at the next Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food. Alexandra van Dongen will focus on the extraordinary iconography of domestic kitchenware, that Bruegel has staged very realistically in this world-famous painting as meaningful props. They inform us not only about the existence of the type of 16th century artefacts, but also about their culinary and symbolic functions.