A Feast For The Eyes: An Art-Inspired Food Tour At The Met
An ancient Greek shopping list that reads like a modern text. Broken eggs that signal a "ruined" woman. The food depicted in the Met's collection is ripe with hidden references.
by Kristen Hartke
Mar 27, 2018
4 minutes
At first glance, Broken Eggs, a 1756 oil painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, seems to depict a fairly innocuous domestic scene of a young woman on the floor next to a basket of broken eggs while a young man is being scolded by the family matriarch. The subtext, however, is a little different, because the broken eggs symbolize the loss of the young woman's virginity.
"Eighteenth-century people would've found this painting very funny," says culinary tour guide Angelis Nannos. "Food can symbolize many things in art."
Nannos leads tours across New York City where participants can indulge in tasty treats such as Turkish bagels, Cuban and classic black-and-white cookies,.
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