December, 2019 - Of Art and Wine

Maso di Banco, Giorgio di Chirico, and Prosecco

St. Sylvester and the Dragon or Pope Sylvester’s Miracle by Maso di Banco, 1340

The Play’s The Thing or Is It The Perspective?

In looking at this piece, do you perhaps feel that you are looking at a stage setting with a drama in progress? The partially crumbled buildings lead your eye into the scene and in a certain way past the action. The combination of these colored structures stacked one behind the other have odd plays of bright light, with darker items in the background and a backdrop of dark blue/black that descends like a curtain. When the eye starts on the front left of this “stage” and travels across the picture plane to the broken light cream-colored wall, then on to the darker cream wall with windows and its broken side wall in almost bright white, one has the sense of also going deeper into the picture. These half broken structures surround the action that is taking place among its ruins. This begs the question, “What is the “play” about?”

Well, it’s about how Pope Sylvester 1 (285-335 C.E.) became St. Sylvester by calming a raging dragon (on the left side of the picture in a hole) when the Emperor Constantine’s magicians could not. They are the ones lying flat on their backs in apoplexy, though we see the continuation of the story with Sylvester about to raise them once again. For all these good deeds, Pope Sylvester I ultimately wound up being made a saint with his day celebrated on December 31st – New Year’s Eve or “Sylvester” as it is sometimes known in Europe.

In some ways it is no wonder that he might be working in such a way, as he was a pupil of Giotto di Bondone, the early 14th century painter of whom the artists of the Renaissance said, “It all began with Giotto.” In the picture here, we see the illusion of a chamber on the other side of an open arch. This painting and its companion were Giotto’s way of creating visual space within the narrow confines of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1305) and an early example of excellent trompe l’oeil (trick the eye) painting.

However, let’s get back to that “stage” set. When the eye moves behind this scene of depth, things go flat again with a solid wall of a crenelated fortress and a tower oddly lit as if by moonlight. Beyond that is the bluish black of the night. The flatness in the rear of this painting is what one normally associates with the late Middle Ages, when backgrounds were sometimes solid colors or even solid gold leaf. However, Maso di Banco is doing something else here, something that is headed toward real perspective, that elemental illusion that makes two dimensions into three.

Maso di Banco’s work is in alignment with his master’s but with the added touch of creative use of color to move the eye through the painting. His pastel colors are reminiscent of those used in Sienese painting at that time, though not quite as fanciful. The column is an important element in that it reminds us as we enter the picture that there is a hole just beyond and in that hole a great activity is happening. Now in most painting of the late Middle Ages, and even into the Renaissance, the stories of holy figures and their miracles are told in blocks with dividing lines in between – yes, like in modern graphic novels. Here di Banco uses that column as a vestige of the normal system of dividing the story into parts. The viewer sees the activity that laid the court magicians low happening in that hole where Pope Sylvester ministers to the dragon and tames him. That happens to the left of the column.

We can see Sylvester, then, emerging from that hole on the right side of the column. We know it is he, as he wears the same cloak and mitre (?). So the story continues with the court of the Emperor looking on as Sylvester brings the magicians back to consciousness. We see one in an orange robe, reverently on his knees before the Pope who is making a gesture over him. One expects, of course, that the story continues with the raising of the other two magicians, but at this point we’ve got the picture. And the picture is quite something not just because of the story, but of how it is framed in this setting of half destroyed buildings with an odd lighting that we know not the origins of.

That odd lighting, however, is the use of color to help create the idea of perspective. The technique is actually known as chromatic perspective, a way of moving the eye along by having it follow similar colors. Here one notices how the use of those creams and whites moves the eye from up front on the left all the way over to the right of the painting. That color scheme moves the eye from in front of the human activity to areas behind that activity and by that, suggesting depth, since things placed one behind another indicate space which goes back into the scene.

Maso di Banco’s work in the Chapel of the Holy Confessors in Santa Croce in Florence, where the painting above exists, is considered his major body of work. This is known because of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s I Commentari, the autobiography of the man who created the Gates of Paradise for the Baptistry near Florence’s Duomo, in which he credited Maso di Banco with painting that chapel. Although di Banco was a key follower of Giotto and a very successful artist in his own right, he did not seem to have others who followed him. His working career is dated from 1335 to 1350 with nothing much else known about his life. The 1350 cut off date for his work is significant as the first instance of the Great Plague hit Europe in 1347 and lasted for about 5 years, carrying off 1/2 of the population of Florence and as much if not more of Siena. There such great Sienese painters as Pietro and Ambrosio Lorenzetti were affected, with Ambrosio making out his last will and testament, commenting that he, too, would probably die of the disease. He did. Perhaps the same happened to Maso di Banco.

But Wait! Everything Old Is New Again.

So along comes the 20th century some 600 years later, long after the rules of perspective had been securely figured out with many Renaissance works proving that the concept had been mastered and actual realism had been achieved by the end of the 1400s. However, it seems that there are certain landscapes of the mind, dreams and misty memories of by gone times and places that need a means of expression. Giorgio di Chirico (1888-1978), an Italian, born and raised in Greece, thus a visual inheritor of two classical cultures, came along founding his Scuola Metafisica in 1915, which touched off the Surrealist Movement. Surrealism is rather other worldly and cannot be expressed properly within the confines of ordinary reality, but what about that odd almost real representations of someone like Maso di Banco?

Piazza d’Italia by Giorgio di Chirico, 1913

We see here in di Chirico’s Piazza d’Italia the arches of buildings with odd lighting. They follow the rules of perspective generally but the coloring gives a sense of dreamlike irreality. The stone sculpture in the center is of Ariadne, the princess who helped her lover, Theseus, find his way out of the labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur by having given him a spool of thread that he could use to mark his path going in and find his way out again. He later abandoned her on the island of Naxos. So this painting like di Banco’s tells a story. The recumbent statue seems consumed in woe, and its shadow casts a long and sorrowful trail of darkness, almost as though it pours out of the statue of the weeping woman. The odd acid-like colors, the two men shaking hands as if making a deal, and the exploding volcano in the distance on the right, all add tension to this surrealistic dream.

Giorgio di Chirico’s metaphysical and surrealist works were among his most popular, so much so that when a collector lamented not being able to buy one of his works, Les Muses Inquietanti (The Disquieting Muses, 1918), from the new owner, di Chirico just made a copy of it to sell to the collector. In fact, he got into the habit of copying his own works. He called these works verifalsi or true fakes, and thus struck a victory for the intellectual property of artists. We now have copyright laws that protect the images that artists create for certain periods of time so that the artist and his or her estate benefit from usage, regardless of who owns the original painting. However, works published before 1925, like the di Chirico above, are now in public domain, so we can enjoy it here.

Giorgio di Chirico was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, touching the work of such great painters as Edward Hopper, film directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and the poet Sylvia Plath, who wrote a poem called “The Disquieting Muses.” He was a writer of poetry and a surrealist novel as well. For more on that, Stefania Heim has a great article in Paris Review on his poetry called “Giorgio di Chirico’s Italian Poetry” (click on this link www.theparisreview.org ) Fortunately for everyone, di Chirico had a wonderful knowledge of art and art history and the genius to bring things from the past forward into a new age. So Maso di Banco did have at least one follower of sorts after all.

Paintings are in Public Domain.

Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor, and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com.

St. Sylvester’s is December 31st. Time for Some Prosecco!

This photo is of my very favorite glass of Prosecco, chilled to perfection, served on the outer terrace of a lovely restaurant (Dimna’s), and drunk while watching the city of Toronto’s chic stroll the boutiques of Yorkville. All that after I had spent a delightful summer afternoon checking out the art galleries that the area is so famous for. Unfortunately, in my reverie, I did not note down the name of the vintner. All I can say is that I still known where to go for a good glass of bubbly on a hot summer day in the big city. But you ask why Prosecco and not Champagne?

Well, first, I was in an Italian restaurant, and Prosecco comes from the Veneto, that lovely area of Italy that leads one to Venice, La Serenissima. Since the French were the discoverers of sparkling wine made from those tiny, pale, crystalline green grapes from Champagne, they patented the name for themselves, leaving others who signed that agreement to create their own names for their sparkling wines. This one takes on the name of a town, Prosecco, in the Veneto, though the grape it is primarily made from is now called the Glera and no longer much referred to as the Prosecco.

So What’s the Difference Anyway?

It is all in the process. As opposed to the French methode champenoise, Prosecco is made by a quicker, less expensive process called the “tank method.” Basically that means that everything is created inside a huge tank with a high pressure CO2 mechanism to make the bubbles. As I said, it is quicker and cheaper, which unfortunately has led to the creation of such a thing as bad Prosecco, caused not by the quality of the grapes, but by the cheap production methods. The bad ones are to be avoided like the plague unless you favor horrid headaches. It is best to look for DOC or DOCG markings for assured quality or the names Valdobbiadene or Conegliano.

Prosecco comes in a range from Brut, to Extra Dry, to Dry and finally Demi-Sec, representing levels from very dry to semi-sweet. One of the favorites of mine in La Marca Prosecco, which has a crisp taste with touches of fruit like peach and apple. A 5 oz glass has 80 calories, and a bottle ranges in price from $12.50 to $15.00. While Prosecco makes a wonderful celebratory toast, it is also great for making mimosas and spritzers. In terms of food pairings, it is called a “food-friendly” wine, so depending on how dry or sweet the bottle is, you can pair it with salty items like prosciutto, perhaps wrapped around a piece of melon for a sucré/salée treat, or seafood, fried foods, creamy sauces, Asian foods, and even popcorn!

So there is no excuse not to celebrate Sylvester, with this charming, tasty sparkler. Who knows? As the New Year rings in, you might meet a dragon who can be tamed by a glass of bubbly.

Here is another way to get into sparkling wines: join a sparkling wine club. You can take a look at the Cellars Wine Club information on the right, under Of Art and Wine Pages, or click here cellarswineclub.com. While you are looking, take note of their Give Back Program of vetted charities that wine club members can have Cellars donate to on their behalf. And remember with Cellars, there is a “No bad bottle” return policy.

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2019

Coming next on Of Art and Wine: Rain Paintings and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest.

Rain-auvers by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890. National Museum of Wales.

Inclement weather may seem to be a surprising subject, but capturing the beauty of falling rain has fascinated many artists, including Van Gogh. In terms of wine and rain, one’s mind goes immediately to the Pacific Northwest, famous for its rains and now for its cool climate wines. Come along for the virtual tour of some famous rain paintings and wines from the rain swept Northwest Pacific Coast.

The Medici Palace’s Procession of the Magi and Sparkling Shiraz.

The Middle King in the Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli, 1459-1460 in the Medici Chapel in Florence, Italy.

Odd that there is always so much controversy over the identities of the three kings in the Procession of the Magi. The fellow above is often referred to as Melchior, though in Italy he is known as Baldassare (Balthazar). What is generally accepted is that this figure is probably a portrait of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos of the Byzantine Empire. And how did he wind up in a painting in Florence, Italy? Well, it’s complicated, all having to do with Medici influence, the Emperor’s need for help from the Western Church, and the power of art.

Here is the leader of the House of Medici, Cosimo, the Elder, who after having been first imprisoned, bribed his way to freedom and took off to Venice in 1433 for a year of exile. However, he was called back to Florence where he went about reestablishing his power. It just so happened that a great council was called around 1438 to form an alliance between the two parts of the Christian Church. The original site for this council was to be Ferrara, but it and the main port, Venice (La Serenissima), were stricken with plague. Cosimo stepped in and offered up his city for this great meeting of East and West, so all these oriental potentates wound up in Florence.

The Florentines had never seen anything like it, especially the extreme luxury of the clothing and jewels. The Emperor of the East ruled by divine right, with none of this being elected like the Pope, or being a lowly merchant prince like the Medici. He only needed their money to stave off the Muslim Turks, who yes, did finally sack his city, Constantinople (now Istanbul), in 1453. However, back in the late 1430s, Florence was treated to the spectacle of the royalty of the Orient, which made a lasting and useful impression.

The merchant princes of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance had to tread carefully as there were Usury and Sumptuary Laws. For instance, the early banks set themselves up in the market places, often little more than a table or board (banco) with a green cloth spread over it. They could not pay interest on the money deposited with them but instead gave monetary “gifts” at the end of the year. A gift certainly could not be usury, could it? Likewise, great displays of elegant clothing, jewels, furs, etc. were reined in by laws limiting such sumptuous displays. And yet, all of this existed in a Florence, where great wealth showed itself in rather magical ways, especially involving the arts.

So what do you do when the Archbishop (Antonino, in this case) declares that sacred pictures should not feature exotic items, wild animals like monkeys and leopards, and other frivolities? Well, you choose a theme that allows you to do that as part of telling the holy story. You have one of your favorite painters do a mural of the magi, following a great star, and bringing with them all the rich and exotic treasures of the Orient, which the whole of Florence knew to exist since they had seen them some years before when John VIII came to town. The Medici family and other notables (the Pope, local nobility from Milan and Rimini, etc) were painted as fellow travelers, trailing along on this long voyage, depicted in splendid colors on the eastern, southern, and western walls of a chapel-like room, and ending at an altar on the northern wall, where a painting by Fra Filippo Lippi showed the Virgin adoring her newborn infant. (For more on that painting see the vernellestudio.com/blog of December 1, 2019.) Voila! The Procession of the Magi

The Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Medici Chapel.

It was Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-1497), seen here painted into the grand processional, wh0 was tasked with creating this wonder of advertising hubris pretending to be piety. An artist who became one of the periods most prolific fresco painters, doing such feats as 25 murals representing the Old Testament in Pisa, for which they rewarded him with a tomb, Gozzoli made sure that he was well represented in the procession. He painted himself in different areas at least three times, here with Opus Benotti written on his red cap as a way of signing this masterpiece of a mural.

This lovely space is now called the Medici Chapel. However, Cosimo, the Elder, actually did business in that room (no wasted space at the palazzo). Unlike today when there is an entrance and exit to a chapel lit with electric light, in Cosimo’s day, there was one entrance and no natural light, only candlelight. Cosimo was known to put up a table with a green cloth over it and conduct his business deals as in the days when his father, Giovanni de Benci, set up shop in the market. Of course, Cosimo did his prayers at the altar in front of Lippi’s lovely virgin, but being ever practical, he put two important doors there, one on either side of that altar. One was to a safe room where the old man could bolt himself in if an emergency arose. The other was a passage that led to the outside of the stone palazzo’s bank vault like structure. All that said, it must have been truly wonderful to see this procession of riches with its bright colors and glimmers of gold dancing along in the flickering candlelight.

When you visit the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi these days, you are allowed only 20 minutes inside the chapel if with a tour group. However, since each tour member is given a separate ticket, you can use that to re-enter for another splendid few minutes with the zeitgeist of the 15th century. And if you are in the gift shop, you might want to get a copy of Medici Money by British author, Tim Parks, on the fabulous banking boys of 15th century Florence.

Paintings are in Public Domain.

AND NOW FOR ANOTHER GIFT OF THE ORIENT – SHIRAZ WINE.

As confusing as which name belongs to which king is the story of where Shiraz/Syrah wine comes from. The most often told legends go back to the Ancient Greeks and Persians. Shiraz was and is a city in Iran (Ancient Persia) known for making a deep red wine called Shirazi. In one version of the story, the Phocaean Greeks who were great sailors, traders, and settlers brought that wine and its grapes to the island of Sicily where it was cultivated near the city of Syracruse, from whence the grape took on the name Syrah. This ancient travel fits nicely with the idea of wine being transported from Persia by perhaps one of the wise men depicted in that famous procession of magi.

Whatever the story, and I am sure Persians and Greeks still debate the scenario, the Shiraz/Syrah grape from which this dark, rich berry wine is made wound up being cultivated most famously in the Côte du Rhone area in France. I use the combined name as the modern Syrah grape and the Shiraz grape would seem to be the same grape, though DNA studies of the genome have not been completed. Aside from being grown in the Cote du Rhone region in France, they are also grown in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and in Washington State. This cool climate Shiraz/Syrah can come in both heavier or lighter versions, and berry desserts are marvelous with a glass of dark berry Shiraz.

Regardless of the history of the Shiraz/Syrah grape (more info on that can be found at thewinecellarinsider.com which has yet another tale of the origins of this grape), it produces a wine with a range of tastes from blackberry or blueberry to dark olive and pepper, depending upon whether it is mixed with Cabernet Sauvignon or Grenache grapes.

True it has a high alcohol content, but for the health conscious, it also is very high in antioxidants. The really great thing is that it goes so well with so many of our favorite cold weather, holiday time feasts, like grilled leg of lamb, braised chicken, roast duck or pork served with tangy sauces (but not sweet ones). Turkey or chicken with crispy skin and moist meat combined with cranberry or orange/cranberry relish works marvelously well with Shiraz.

BUT THE JOURNEY ISN’T OVER…

The next stop in this story is Australia. Yes, for those of us who feel oppressed by the holiday insistence on sparkling white wines – Champagne, Prosecco, etc. – the Aussies have come to our rescue as the primary producers of sparkling Shiraz. Go to vinepair.com for a variety of articles on this Australian favorite described in its high end form as “…a broad-shouldered, full-bodied, high alcohol [wine] with tingling, tickling, effervescence and just a whisper of off-dry sweetness.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? Just right for a Merry Christmas!

Since we are on the topic of wine at Christmas, let’s add giving to a worthwhile cause. Please check out the different wine club offerings at cellarswineclub.com Click here or go to the Of Art and Wine Pages – Cellars Wine Club. They have wines from the U.S. and around the world, a club for every taste and budget, a “no bad bottle” return policy, and a program of giving, where the you can select from a number of vetted charities to have Cellars donate 15% of your purchase.

So on that note, let me wish you all a very happy holiday season. Here’s to good art and good wine. Joy to the world, indeed!

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2019

Coming for New Year’s on Of Art and Wine: Maso di Banco, Giorgio di Chirico, and Prosecco.

Well, it is the New Year, a time when everything old is new again. Maso di Banco used chromatic perspective to show St. Sylvester slaying a dragon on his day, December 31st, and di Chirico used di Banco’s light and shadow technique in 20th century style. Best to view these paintings with a good glass of chilled Prosecco. Felice Anno Nuovo!

Let It Snow: Snow Paintings and Mulled Wine

The Road to Giverny in Winter by Claude Monet, 1885. Click picture to magnify.

Edouard Manet, so famous for his many works that advanced our ideas about painting, tried his hand at painting snow scenes. He gave up, saying that no one could do it like Monet. So what does Monet do that is so special? Snow normally reduces landscapes to a rather stark scale of black, white and gray. In some cases it covers things that might be rather ugly, like old poorly kept houses and dirty streets, with a lovely blanket of white. However, even forests to the casual observer are just dark branches, deep green conifer needles, and relentless white.

Well, Monet was never a casual observer of anything, and we can see in his painting above that he in particular took note of the sky. We have all seen those wintry skies when the light fades around 4:30 in the afternoon and the sun, no longer in plain view, still lights up the undersides of the clouds. That twilight sky is Monet’s special touch in this painting. As travelers on the road in this painting, that colorful sky not only alleviates the dead of winter, but it gives us a touch of the beautiful that we can really appreciate since we also see houses coming into view, which means our cold weather journey is about to end. So we notice those little spots of color, perhaps the last of autumn still coming through the snow on the side of the road. In particular, we can wonder at the way the crystalline ice over the snow shows itself blue while reflecting winter sunset pinks. It is all an enjoyable experience that we can talk about over something hot to drink before dinner when we arrive home, just a little distance down the way.

Monet’s skill and Manet’s dictum aside, snow paintings have been done by many other artists, with a variety of different feelings and effects.

Snow at Louveciennes by Camille Pissarro , 1878. Click picture to magnify.

Here we have a fellow Impressionist, Camille Pissarro, once again putting the viewer in the cold countryside, but not too distant from home. We see the figure leaning forward in the direction of the buildings, clearly indicating his intent to get there and inside. The atmosphere is once again a winter twilight, right at late afternoon. Pissarro infuses the scene with blue, ranging from pale blue to deep blue-violet and touches of lavender, all effective ways of rendering the feeling of cold. The eye-catching beauty belongs to the trees. Their gnarled trunks and branches have caught and held the snow, bringing traces of white up from the foreground into the main picture plain and finally up to that frosty blue sky. Those same trees in their black and dark gray stand out against the blue-gray and blue-violet background, indication of more dense forest in the distance. The tree branches dance, leaning like the man in the foreground away from the direction the wind is blowing. All this forward movement points to the sturdy buildings not too far in the distance. Once again the viewer can enjoy the cold beauty of winter without fear since shelter is not far away.

Of courses, romantic paintings of the snowy countryside are wonderfully appealing; however, it snows in the city, too. Gustave Caillebotte, friend, and patron of the Impressionists and a fine painter himself, gives us a different winter view.

Rooftops in the Snow by Gustave Caillebotte, 1878, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Here the viewer is safe and warm inside a building rather high up and one with a city view. Of course the steely gray of the city in winter makes for a feeling of closed in isolation. Yet there are some nice touches of muted red that lead our eye into the picture, from the close in clay chimney pots to a distant façade of a building. However, the thin strip of dead gray sky falls like a heavy curtain, sealing us in with little desire to go out. Caillebotte was a man about town who was always out and about. In fact, he is probably most famous for his painting of finely dressed people strolling the streets of Paris under their umbrellas, but yes, still strolling in the rain (see his Paris Street Rainy Day, 1877). I like to think that in this painting of snow, he was perhaps feeling a bit trapped by the miserable weather and decided to turn it into art.

Snow is still a worthwhile and interesting subject for painters. The piece below is by a talented young Colorado artist who does plein air painting, Jared Brady, see jaredbrady.com/artwork

Brady captures the vertiginous slant of the mountain with its aspens marching downhill in almost military formation. They seem to push aside the conifers to take center stage as the subject of this painting. The sunlight on the snow moves the eye back up the hillside to a bit of exposed reddish rock (this is Colorado after all), some distant evergreens, and beyond that to the blue sky. That sunlight becomes dappled, as its rays push back into the thickness of the trees. That dance of light is cheerful. The whole scene leaves one with the feeling of having just taken a stroll in the forest after a fresh fall of snow.

One way to really appreciate the elements of a painting such as Winter Light is to see how the artist approaches doing it. Brady does not leave us out of his process, as we can see here in his video, Winter Aspens, showing his plein air techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH_YxPV2hpo

Well, after all of this wandering about in the snow, it is now time to come in from the cold and see what we can do to warm ourselves up.

Paintings are in Public Domain or used with the artist’s permission.

Mulled Wine: Recipes for Wintertime Cheer

Ancient Roman painting of cupids with wine in the House of Vetti, Pompeii.

As with so many things that have come down to us, all roads lead to Rome. It was the Romans who spread this cold weather drink all throughout their vast empire. Yet, it was the Ancient Greeks who tipped the Romans off to the wonders of hot wine with spices. For the Ancient Greeks, it was a matter of what to do with low quality wine. Pouring it out is never a good solution, so as the winter winds began to blow, the idea of warming the wine up with a touch of spices and citrus seemed like a good idea. The fact that it made you feel good obviously meant it was good for you, even medicinal. In fact, they named this concoction after Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. For more on this story and other aspects of mulled wine in history plus eight recipes to try, see “The Long, Storied History of Mulled Wine” at vinepair.com

Scenes from a Medieval cookbook. commons.wikimedia.org

Having spent a number of years living in Avignon, which had its heyday in the 14th century, I naturally turn to the wisdom of the Middle Ages. When the winter winds come blowing down the Rhone River, I can tell you, a hot wine is a near lifesaver. The comments below attest to the wisdom of those medieval times.

“Spiced wines were usually made by mixing an ordinary (red) wine with an assortment of spices such as ginger, cardamom, pepper, grains of paradise, nutmeg, cloves and sugar. These would be contained in small bags which were either steeped in wine or had liquid poured over them to produce hypocras and claré. By the 14th century, bagged spice mixes could be bought ready-made from spice merchants.”

These comments on spiced or mulled wines, and the recipe come from the Medieval Drinks section of Life in a Medieval Castle castlesandmanorhouses.com It would seem that the idea of mulled wine as a comfort drink in those cold medieval castles spawned an expansion in the spice trade with the introduction of those pre-mixed spice packages. One can only imagine the competition to come up with winning names for each mix, designed to enthrall the women who shopped for the castles.

But let us leave the chilled confines of the Middle Ages. We live in the age of crock pots and slow cooking methods. Yes, you can allow the ingredients to mellow for two hours as suggested in thespruceeats.com article on slow cooker mulled wine. This technique not only creates a richly flavored mulled wine, but also perfumes the house with cheery warm celebratory scents. On the other hand, we live in the age of instant or almost that, so a twenty minute brew comes in handy when last minute guests come for some holiday cheer.

The photo above comes from Gimme some Oven gimmesomeoven.com and comes with detailed instructions on how to make it. Just click the link above. For yummy things to eat with your mulled wine, I once again refer you to The Spruce Eats for the quick, delicious treat called Devils on Horseback (made with dates), or if you are just coming from church, Angels on Horseback (made with apricots) thespruceeats.com.

While one does not need more that a red table wine to create a mulled wine, it is not necessary to give up drinking the good stuff. For that you might consider joining a wine club. Click on Cellars Wine Club under Of Art and Wine Pages on your left to see the various ways to get into some very good wine from the U.S. and from around the world, including wines in the 90+ category. There is a club for every level of taste and budget and a “no bad bottle” return policy. As well you can indicate which of a number of vetted charities you want Cellars to donate to: cellarswineclub.com

So start the holiday season off with an artistic and creative way to enjoy the snow, like being inside by a cozy fire, looking at snow paintings, and sipping a hot cup of homemade mulled wine. Sounds good to me!

Images of paintings are in public domain, except those from Jared Brady, which are used with the artist’s permission.

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

Coming soon: The Medici Palace’s Procession of the Magi and Sparkling Shiraz.

The Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli, 1459-1460 in the Medici Chapel, Florence, Italy.

This portion of wall is just part of what surrounds one completely in the Medici Chapel. Ostensibly designed to show a religious scene, this creation took the opportunity to show off the importance of wealth in all its exotic forms. The Medici were merchant princes after all. The three kings of the Orient are shown bearing royal gifts for the Christ child in celebration of his birth. Since one of the wise men was Persian, he might just have brought another item from his land, a deep red wine called Shiraz, which we can now have in a sparkling form. What a nice touch for a celebration like Christmas.