Una cioccolata con padre Martini: appunti di cultura materiale del Settecento

Abstract

A drug claimed to have health-improving qualities, a status symbol, social lubricant, tool for seduction, or complementary currency for paying high-end professionals, a issue disputed among rival schools of medicine and moral theology: in the early-modern lifestyle, all this and much more was associated with the habit of drinking chocolate. The entire process – from manufacturing the raw cocoa paste through quality and pricing to final manipulation and actual consumption – stirred up interest in public discourse during the 18th century, involving several major players on the cultural and artistic stage of Enlightenment Europe. Next to Padre Martini, some of them are addressed in this paper (including but not limited to: Goldoni, Metastasio, Farinelli, Jommelli, Gluck, the Mozart family, Joseph Haydn, Saint Alphonsus Liguori, and Jean-Étienne Liotard). Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf’s lengthy and brilliant report of his 1763 sojourn in Bologna – here translated in its entirety for the first time in Italian – serves as a specific case study.