A feast for the eyes

the long version

Even centuries later, to read accounts of late mediaeval banquets is to enter a fantastic world where gilded stags burst into song, the Holy Church may suddenly appear to beg aid from the assembled nobles, and four and twenty musicians play within a pie. This book brings together the understudied array of surviving artworks, archival documents, chroniclers accounts and cookbooks to retrace these events and reassess the late mediaeval visual culture in which they were so highly prized.