Our Food Editor Shares Her Favorite Food Paintings at The Ringling

A restored painting has made its way back into the collection at The Ringling Museum of Art. Watermelon Regatta is an early 18th-century Italian painting that has undergone significant restoration over the last seven years and is now hanging in Gallery 12. Painted by an unknown artist identified as “Master of the Fertility of the Egg,” crustaceans and other animals race watermelon boats through a canal, while onlookers cheer them on. It’s filled with food, fun and plenty of absurdity.

That led me to wonder what other fabulous food art The Ringling has to offer.

After wandering the galleries and selecting paintings with food imagery, curator Sarah Cartwright explained what each painting signified, outside of just, well, food. Cartwright grew up in Sarasota, where she attended Pine View School (also my alma mater). We even had the same AP art history teacher.

“If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Johnston, I might not be an art historian,” Cartwright tells me.

While I’m no art historian, I do have an eye for good food—and there’s a lot of it featured throughout The Ringling galleries. Here are my favorites.

Summer by a follower of Giuseppe Arcimboldo

“These kind of compositions are what Arcimboldo specialized in,” Cartwright says. “This is a copy, probably by a Spanish artist. The name Morales is inscribed into one of the arms, which is how we know. This [scene] is typical of Arcimboldo’s works, composing heads out of other vegetables and other foodstuff.”

Still Life With Fruit by Luca Forte

“This painter is depicting still life in the manner of Caravaggio,” Cartwright explains. “There is a beautiful play of light and shade on the fruit and on the leaves of the fruit, which is characteristic of Luca’s work. It’s a mature work, with crowded, luscious, in-your-face fruit. At the top of the painting, the name of the owner is made from a piece of string that the bird is delivering.”

Still Life With Plates by Cristoforo Munari 

“This is in great contrast with the last one,” Cartwright says. “That one was teeming with voluptuousness; this one is so structured and carefully balanced. It involves the elements that we put on the table—plates and other vessels. They’re balanced or, in some cases, teetering on their sides. It’s also very dark and makes me wonder, ‘What’s back there?’ It has a mysterious quality with implied movement, like something is going to happen—and I don’t think it’s good.”

Still Life With Parrots by Jan Davidz de Heem

“We know this one used to be in the Ringling mansion,” Cartwright says. “This is a typical exorbitant, overflowing still life from this Flemish painter. But the picture is piling on so many delicacies—again, they’re falling off the table and sliding around. There are many saturated colors, especially the reds. The parrots are an African grey and a scarlet macaw, I think. We know that Mable had at least one parrot.”

Still Life With Dead Game by Frans Snyders 

“This is a painting people have strong reactions to,” Cartwright says. “It has many dead animals. From the perspective of painting, it’s beautiful; you can see the brushstrokes in the fur. It’s a lesson in how to paint. From a subject matter perspective, it’s like man’s effect on nature—all of these animals have been killed by us for our delectation. The variety and quantity of excess can be upsetting. There’s actually a cat in there, too, under the bench below the dangling back legs of the board. So there is one live creature.”

Allegory of Water by Jacopo Bassano

“It’s nice to see this piece in the still life gallery, despite it being a narrative painting, because its focus is on the artist’s abilities to carry light across low lighting,” Cartwright says. “You can see the fish’s metallic scales. The labor of food is present.”

Drawing of the Lottery in the Piazza delle Erbe in Turin by Giovanni Michele Graneri

“This one is so delightful,” Cartwright says. “The detail is like the Master of the Fertility of the Egg’s, although in a totally different way. We see all this human interaction. There are people smelling the melons and another guy stealing one while looking right at us. There’s haggling, children and then one guy with his horse tipped over among the mayhem. What’s so interesting about this is that stuff is in the foreground. The idea that a lottery is happening in the background is secondary.”

The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek by Peter Paul Rubens

“This whole composition revolves around a loaf of bread,” Cartwright says. “It’s meant to be highlighted. In the Old Testament, this was a prefiguration of the coming of Christ. There are actually three loaves, in addition to a huge basket of bread on one guy’s back. The swags of fruit across the top go back to antiquity. The paintings are designs for tapestries, and tapestries would have incorporated this same thing. There’s this whole game Rubens is playing between what’s real and fictive.”

The Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra by Claude Vignon 

“I love this painting. It looks like a Christmas card—red and gold and green,” Cartwright says. “There are cherries and maybe apricots and peaches. She’s throwing the best party, showing Anthony up.”

Madonna of the Cherries by Quentin Metsys 

“The cherries are making a specific reference in this painting,” Cartwright says. “They are called the fruit of paradise, given as a reward for virtuousness, and  they also symbolize heaven. It’s a great painting. You can see these classic elements in a northern style. The Italian ideas are starting to influence painters of the north [like Metsys, who is Flemish].”

Satyr with Young Dionysus by Fonderia Chiurazzi

“This is a copy of work from antiquity. John Ringling bought all these copies at a foundry in Naples, likely with the idea of using them at a Ritz-Carlton project he was working on on Longboat Key,” Cartwright says. “When that didn’t work out, he decided to put them in the courtyard. Almost everything there is cast from antiquities.”

The Ringling is open at 10 a.m. seven days a week at 5401 Bayshore Road, Sarasota. For more information call (941) 359-5700 or click here.