Midst all the opulent and overly ornate works of art from the Baroque period, hangs a modest but well-known painting, Il Mangiafagioli, by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), depicting a quotidian scene, a peasant sitting down to a simple lunch of bean soup, onions, bread, a vegetable pie and a jug of red wine. The Beaneater is as Florentine as Brunelleschi’s dome, given that the Florentines were often called by the taunt, ‘beaneaters,’ especially in bygone days.
The painting captures that moment when ‘the peasant is just raising a spoonful of beans to his lips, only to stop, surprised, by the intrusion of the viewer’, and in one sense, it is remarkably like a modern photo, a snapshot of a working class scene. At the same time, the table setting could be the work of an early food stylist. In modern times, food stylists bombard our senses and shape our taste from every media quarter. Note the crisp white linen and the well composed meal, the wine on the table and the strategically placed bread. You would expect to see a rustic wooden table in this naturalistic vignette, something that the modern food stylist would prefer too. (Have wooden planks used as food styling props become clichéd yet and why is good linen shunned in the modern world?) This bean eating peasant has a fine knife and glassware, a generous jug of wine and serve of bread. Perhaps he is an upwardly mobile peasant of the 1590s about to become a member of the white meat-eating class, despite the dirt under his nails.
Interestingly, up until modern times, beans were regarded as peasant food,
‘Social codes in Baroque Italy extended as far as to food. According to contemporary thinkers, foodstuffs like beans and onions, which are dark in color and grow low to the ground, were suitable only for similarly lowly consumers, like peasants.¹
If this Beaneater’s repast were placed before me today, I would be overjoyed and would probably pay dearly for it too, as I once did, at the delightful restaurant, Il Pozzo, in Monteriggione, Tuscany, where a bowl of bean filled Ribollita, served with a side of raw onions and good Tuscan bread cost me a large wad of lire. Other than the price, the meal hardly differed from the one depicted in Carracci’s painting of 1590. Things don’t change much over the centuries in Italy, a conservative country, particularly when it comes to food, recipes and styling.
This modern-day beaneater, Mr Tranquillo, was bribed with a bottle of Yering Sangiovese 2010, to pose for this ‘painting’. A bowl of bean soup, good bread and a glass of wine is a lunchtime reward for hard work.
How to cook dried white beans and eat well for one dollar.
This recipe will give you enough cooked beans for a very large soup for a crowd or enough to divide and freeze for later soups or dips.
500g dried cannellini beans
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled but whole
4-5 sage leaves, and/or a small branch of rosemary.
60 ml extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve
2 teaspoons or more of salt
- Place the beans in a very large bowl with plenty of cold water. Leave to soak for at least 8 hours or overnight.
- Drain the beans and place in a heavy-based saucepan or cast iron pot with the garlic, herbs, olive oil and 2.5 litres of water.
- Bring to a simmer on the lowest heat setting and cook, covered, very gently until the beans are tender. Do not add salt and do not boil. Salt hardens beans and prevents them from softening and boiling splits the beans.
- Remove any scum that rises to the top of the water. When the beans are soft and the cooking water is creamy, add the salt and some freshly ground pepper towards the end of the cooking. Test and adjust seasoning. Depending on the age of the beans, this could take two or more hours with slow cooking.
- Use the beans to make a simple cannellini bean soup. Start with a soffritto of finely chopped onion, carrot and celery cooked gently in olive oil, then when softened, add some vegetable stock and cook for 10 minutes. Add the cooked beans and creamy cooking water. Heat for a further 5 minutes, taste and season. Consider pureeing half the mixture with a stick blender and return the puree to the pot. Serve in a deep bowl over grilled slightly stale sourdough bread and drizzle some good oil on top.
¹http://www.artble.com/artists/annibale_carracci/paintings/the_bean_eater
L’impostore ed ll Mangiafagioli
ALMOST ITALIAN 
Great post!
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Thanks Lori, It was fun making Mr T become the Beaneater.
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Well done Rae! A good read and an excellent portrait of Mr T.
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It cost me the best wine in the cellar!
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Heck, I’d pose for you, for that wine!
I loved the way you introduced this recipe today.
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Thanks Yvonne. Ahah, yes, that Sangiovese aged very nicely and I felt a good one was called for, as I dragged out the most peasant like clothes I could find for the shoot. ( not hard, given his clothing taste).
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LOL!
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Great post Francesca, and congrats on getting Mr T to pose, but then soup wine and bread are a great incentive, who could refuse
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That’s true, and I scored half that bottle.Time for another quick run over the hill to Yering: replacements are in order. Mr T reckons the stats will drop with his pic in the post.
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He looks the real deal so I doubt it..
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Beans are a big part of the diet in our area of Italy. I love them! I especially love sausage and beans. It often features on menus in local restaurants and I cook it often, even when I am in Australia.
Thank you for the bean recipe. I must admit I usually use tinned or bottled beans, but this is a much better idea.
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Home cooked beans are so tasty. It’s worth doing a big batch and stashing cooked beans in the freezer. Some of the best bean meals I ate in Italy were around Lucca and in the Garfagnana, beans and farro. Yum. Need to get back there soon.
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I will be back there in September for about 6 weeks, then again in February for 4 months…come on over.
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I didn’t know about Florentinos being called bean eaters – I like this little nugget of information. The photo of Mr T is priceless and will no doubt become a family heirloom.
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It captures his inner ‘dag’ and his preference for peasant attire.
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Nice styling! What a coincidence, am making fagioli cannelloni all’ll olio today with fresh beans that are plentiful in the market at the moment.
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Lovely fresh beans all’olio and summer.. and markets… I wish.
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It will be yours soon…
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Maybe people use wooden tables because that’s what they have at home. Doesn’t that make sense?
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Yes it does make sense but stylists aren’t using wooden tables- they are often using rough looking planks with chippy paint and so on- nothing like the wood you might actually eat off.
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Brilliant – love it when art and food go together. Perhaps food is art after all!
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I really enjoyed reading this post – thank you!
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What fun. A small price for such a unique and cooperative model! Am looking forward to getting home to more soup weather–very warm and humid in Ohio at the moment. xx
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Wonderful post! I read a book with quite a bit about that painting. Blogged here:
http://maefood.blogspot.com/2014/02/food-in-art-and-art-in-food.html
The book is “Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy” by John Varriano
best… mae at mafood.blogspot.com
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That’s a great read Mae. I must find that book.
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Oh isn’t Mr T so good posing for you .. Bit of bribery never hurt anyone! 😊
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Love the photo of Mr T, Francesco, he deserves his reward.
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Haha, yes he does. The things I make him do!
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That’s fantastic – what a way to capture the story of a great painting. I’d heard a bit about Etsy blokes who have to be models of the works of their crafting womenfolk, but this is taking the male muse a whole step further!
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Always looking for new models Chas! Mr Tranquillo is very easily swayed.
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Hi Francesca I think you would love this photo which is along a similar vein…(you’ll see the joke when you see the pic)
https://chasspain.wordpress.com/?s=san+pelligrino
It was taken by my daughter’s friend – she helped with the ‘set’ and is in the top of the pic.
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That is brilliant!! The expressions, the chiaroscuro, and, the tatts!
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Hihih, can’t stop giggling at the bribed Mangiafagioli Australiano. His look is telling that you’ll pay dearly for this, beyond one bottle!
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Very true Manja, there have already been more precious drops opened.
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I have bean making on my food to do list when we get home. We love beans, well the G.O. loves baked beans & sausages… we are glamping! I like them tarted up with onions, capsicum, chillies, spices… but beans don’t love me, and I’d really like to incorporate them more into our food, and more creatively. Although I’m not sure I could get more creative than you getting Mr T. to pose for you. Which I’m going to show the G.O. right now as he has moments when he is reluctantly cooperative when requested to pause for a pic with something.
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