We’d like to welcome Italian food photographer Guila Scarpaleggia, who runs the website Juls’ Kitchen, to The Rambling Epicure.
Guila Scarpaleggia’s Bio
My name is Giulia Scarpaleggia, I am an optimist, a dreamer, a 28 29 30 31 year old full-time herbs blogger. I am the one who appears in the reflections of the spoons in this blog’s photos and – I have to admit it – I am also responsible for the missing slices in each cake.
I live in Tuscany, in the countryside between Siena and Florence, I dream of a blooming vegetable garden, though I am content with a brick wall crammed with pots of fresh herbs and a February 2009 plant that suffers from the heat.
We love: Top 10 Free Luxury Experiences in London – Best Budget Hotels
We love A Luxury Travel Blog, and they often have tips for budget travels. Since we all seem to be on a budget these days, here’s a great link: Top 10 luxury London freebies.
And while on the subject of budget, here’s The Guardian’s list of the 10 best budget hotels in London.
Food Art: Still Life with Geraniums, painting by Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse painted “Still Life With Geranium” in 1906, when he was considered the “King of Fauvism.”It was the first Matisse painting to be purchased for a public exhibition.
An everyday subject matter is depicted in primary colors, thus infusing it with energy and emotion. At the same time, it resembles traditional decorative art.
Matisse was the leader of the Fauvist movement, and used vivid, primary colors long before his contemporaries. The colors always lent a sense of turbulent emotion to his work.
The term “Fauve” means literally “wild beast”. Another prominent member of this movement was André Derain.
What do the glories of ancient Greece and imperial Rome, baroque Naples and pre-revolutionary “Let-them-eat-cake” France have in common with contemporary Paris?
Easy: artful pastry.
Toss out a euro coin nowadays and it will probably land on a Paris pâtisserie whose chef is bent on titillating customers’ taste buds while dazzling eyes and lightening wallets. White chocolate roses crown red powdered-sugar lips. Fruit still-lifes à la Caravaggio top praline plinths. Dark chocolate treasure chests enclose luscious layer cakes, and bras are not of silk but of purest chocolat.
Training in artistic Parisian pastry making is also in vogue: ever since the renowned École Grégoire-Ferrandi cooking school began partnering with mega-star Pierre Hermé, the chef Vogue has dubbed “the Picasso of pastry”, the “Haute Pâtisserie” concept has ruled Paris tastes.
“The fine arts number five,” wrote Marie-Antoine Carême in the late 18th century, “painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal branch of which is pastry.”
Ever the tongue-in-cheek wit, not for nothing Carême was known as “the king of chefs and the chef of kings”. His claim to pastry fame was the invention of Pièces Montées—precursors of today’s tiered wedding cakes. Remember Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot? Carême pièces were big enough to hide a man, like the cakes machine gun-toting Mafiosi burst from in gangster movies.
Meeta, that’s my name given to me by my dad. I was born back in the summer of 1972, one beautiful day in Bombay, India. I was practically delivered in a hotel. That’s where my father has worked for most of his life and it’s what injected the hotelier’s blood into my veins. This hotel lifestyle enabled me to travel the world, get close to many cultures, learn a few languages, and experience many great adventures.
Knowing only a hotel life, I decided to follow my dad’s footsteps and studied Hotel Management, specializing in Marketing and Guest Relations. I trained in one of the finest luxury hotels of this world in Doha, Qatar. That is when a tiny spark for food was ignited in my soul.
I now have settled down in Germany, with the two men I adore, Tom, my loving partner for almost 10 years, and Soeren my adorable son of 56 7 years.
Hotels are not a part of my life in Germany. After graduating I came to Germany and worked in an advertising firm, an architecture and design firm and a couple of software firms. Don’t ask how that came about – it just happened. Glad it did too because along this path I bumped into and fell in love with Tom.
We are now in Weimar and you’ll laugh when I tell you this my traveling feet have begun to itch again! Let’s see where life takes us.
I love photography, always have, but it was with the start of this blog that I discovered the world of Foodography. Since then the passion for photography I developed has taken a complete new angle and opened so many exciting doors. I try to capture shots that speak a thousand words, that makes one feel as if they were a part of the scene and experience the photo with their senses. You tell me if I am succeeding!
Gerard van Honsthorst was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1590, the son of a textile painter and tapestry cartoonist. Like many Dutch painters of his day, he studied in Italy, where he became known as Gherardo delle Notti, or “Gerard of the Night Scenes,” because his figures often depicted dark figures in the night.
Van Honsthorst was apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert, the most celebrated master in Utrecht, with whom he probably made the trip to Italy between 1610 and 1615. During his stay in Italy, Van Honthorst was influenced by Caravaggio, who was at his height. He copied his technique and spread it in the Netherlands. His school is referred to as the Utrecht caravaggists.
The main body of his work consists of commissions for religious paintings, many from his Italian period, such as The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (S. Maria delle Scala, Rome), Christ Before the High Priest (c. 1617, National Gallery, London), and the Supper Party (1620, Uffizi, Florence), all nocturnal scenes.
Van Honsthorst was appointed dean of the Utrecht painter’s guild in 1625 and remained in office for many years. Van Honthorst’s fame soon spread, and in 1628 he was invited to work in London at the court of King Charles I, but returned in less than a year.
He married Sophia Coopmans in 1622 and died a rich man in 1656.
Ralf Heynen is a contemporary still life and portrait painter from the Netherlands.
The incredible twists of the lemon peel bring a particular energy to this painting. Although it appears to be simple, the lemon peel is hanging on to the pulp of the lemon itself for dear life, just by a string. Meanwhile, the lemon is staid, still, unflinching in its almost perfect roundness. It looks heavy and sure of itself as compared to the peel, which is thick and rough and “struggling” to wrench itself from the body of the fruit or “mother”.
My first love for photography started with a little theft: as a little boy I stole my father’s Vöiglander and I started taking pictures on my own, just using my instinct. At that time my father’s camera seemed to me the best camera possible in the whole world, until I reached junior high school and I gave it up for a Bencini all my own. But my little theft came all back to me; my girlfriend to whom I had lent my camera never gave it back to me: that can be considered petty theft, no?
Growing up, I robbed again: in high school I stole time I might have devoted to photography and dedicated myself to my other passion, music. I studied drums and played jazz music. But it was just an infatuation, because I went back to my first love and never left it again. And as a pledge of love, I gave up my history studies in college, causing great distress to many people, but not to myself.
Food Art: Still Life with Mouse, Painting by Giovanna Garzoni
The female painter Giovanna Garzoni, an Italian Baroque painter, highly unusual for a woman of the period 1600-1670 during which she lived. Most her worked was commissioned by rich Italian aristocrats from all over the country, but she painted voluptuous still lifes, such as this Still Life with Mouse.
My first love for photography started with a little theft: as a little boy I stole my father’s Vöiglander and I started taking pictures on my own, just using my instinct. At that time my father’s camera seemed to me the best camera possible in the whole world, until I reached junior high school and I gave it up for a Bencini all my own. But my little theft came all back to me; my girlfriend to whom I had lent my camera never gave it back to me: that can be considered petty theft, no?
Growing up, I robbed again: in high school I stole time I might have devoted to photography and dedicated myself to my other passion, music. I studied drums and played jazz music. But it was just an infatuation, because I went back to my first love and never left it again. And as a pledge of love, I gave up my history studies in college, causing great distress to many people, but not to myself.
Today, I rob with no qualms, and I confess it with no shame. My spoils are my sensations, emotions, lines, colours, compositions: I catch everything that stops in front of my camera, I catch it with a click to close it in a graphic cage. It doesn’t matter if its a catalogue or a magazine. What I’m really interested in is the look, my view of the world. In the millions of images that pass in front of my eyes every day, that go on around me, that chase me in my silence. For this reason I photograph subjects of any kind and still do it every day without specializing in anything in particular. From a luxury hotel suite, to the sexy transparencies of Murano glass. From art exhibitions to a ballet. From a golf course to actors on a stage. The list can go on and on, while this bio must finish here. I hope that I haven’t once more been a thief, that I haven’t taken up to much of your time. If this was the case, please don’t report me to the police, because I will give myself immediately up: I’m Alessandro Boscolo Agostini!
