Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



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  • Title: Baking Brown Bread
  • Creator: Workshop of Giovannino de Grassi, painter
  • Description: The Tacuinum sanitatis was an eleventh-century health handbook written by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad. In it he presents the elements needed for a healthful and happy life. He notes that it is better to consume brown bread than white. In the fourteenth-century illustrated versions the emphasis is on picturing attractive scenes drawing on themes from courtly love, fashionable dress, and estate management for an idealized view of agriculture and food production. Here, a man removes fresh loaves from the oven--or perhaps puts newly formed loaves in to be baked--as a woman supervises him and collects the cooked loaves in a basket.
  • Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Bakers and Baking Bread Cookery Medical Manuscripts Work
  • Geographic Area: Italy
  • Century: 14
  • Date: ca. late 1390s
  • Related Work: Tacuinum sanitatis, a medical treatise. Also known as the Theatrum sanitatis. The manuscript is fully digitized on the Biblioteca Casanatense site.
  • Current Location: Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 4182, fol. 63r
  • Original Location:
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital images; Manuscript Illuminations
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (parchment); Paint
  • Donor: Layman; Probably commissioned by Giangaleazzo Visconti, Count of Milan, or nobility at his court.
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): //
  • Inscription:
  • Related Resources: Cathleen Hoeniger, "The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380-1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre." Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550. Edited by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide. Ashgate,2006. Pp. 51-81.