160 OLD WORLD MASTERS
hidden in a mammoth pie,* performed on various instruments and the
fine viands and wines were circulated.”
After the exhibition of entremets, the pheasant was brought in, the
Crusade proclaimed against the Sultan, and the vows registered.
It is safe to conjecture that Hubert and Jan van Eyck were among
the painters who were employed to design the entremets, triumphal
arches, and curiosities executed in pastry and in confections made of
sugar, as well as to paint portraits of distinguished Flemings and
altar-pieces for their churches.
The Flemish Primitives certainly had many occasions to feast their
eyes upon magnificence!
John Paston, who went to Bruges to attend Charles the Bold’s
second marriage in 1468 to Margaret of York, was overwhelmed and
dazed by what he saw. “Nothing was like it save King Arthur’s
Court,” he wrote home. The streets were hung with tapestries and
cloth-of-gold, triumphal arches were erected and at intervals along her
way the bride was entertained by “Histories,” the joint production
of painters, decorators, dramatists, and machinists. The banquet-hall
was superbly decorated and the chroniclers say “lighted by chandeliers
in the form of castles surrounded by forest and mountains with revolv-
ing paths on which serpents, dragons, and other monstrous animals
seemed to roam in search of prey, spouting forth jets of flame that were
reflected in huge mirrors, so arranged as to catch and multiply the rays.
The dishes containing the principal meats were ships, seven feet long
and completely rigged, the masts and cordage gilt, the sails and
streamers of silk, each floating in a silver lake between shores of ver-
dure and enamelled rocks and attended by a fleet of boats laden with
* This reminds us of the old Nursery rhyme:
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the King? ”
Undoubtedly this jingle is an echo of the jokes and “pleasantries” in confectionery and pastry
that were perpetrated by the Mediaeval chejs.—E. S.
hidden in a mammoth pie,* performed on various instruments and the
fine viands and wines were circulated.”
After the exhibition of entremets, the pheasant was brought in, the
Crusade proclaimed against the Sultan, and the vows registered.
It is safe to conjecture that Hubert and Jan van Eyck were among
the painters who were employed to design the entremets, triumphal
arches, and curiosities executed in pastry and in confections made of
sugar, as well as to paint portraits of distinguished Flemings and
altar-pieces for their churches.
The Flemish Primitives certainly had many occasions to feast their
eyes upon magnificence!
John Paston, who went to Bruges to attend Charles the Bold’s
second marriage in 1468 to Margaret of York, was overwhelmed and
dazed by what he saw. “Nothing was like it save King Arthur’s
Court,” he wrote home. The streets were hung with tapestries and
cloth-of-gold, triumphal arches were erected and at intervals along her
way the bride was entertained by “Histories,” the joint production
of painters, decorators, dramatists, and machinists. The banquet-hall
was superbly decorated and the chroniclers say “lighted by chandeliers
in the form of castles surrounded by forest and mountains with revolv-
ing paths on which serpents, dragons, and other monstrous animals
seemed to roam in search of prey, spouting forth jets of flame that were
reflected in huge mirrors, so arranged as to catch and multiply the rays.
The dishes containing the principal meats were ships, seven feet long
and completely rigged, the masts and cordage gilt, the sails and
streamers of silk, each floating in a silver lake between shores of ver-
dure and enamelled rocks and attended by a fleet of boats laden with
* This reminds us of the old Nursery rhyme:
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the King? ”
Undoubtedly this jingle is an echo of the jokes and “pleasantries” in confectionery and pastry
that were perpetrated by the Mediaeval chejs.—E. S.