Painture : the temporal and emotional labor of stale bread in the French studio

Abstract

This article examines the temporal and emotional labor accomplished by stale bread in the French studio. A repository of the passage of time, which renders fresh bread stale in a matter of days, stale bread was emblematic of the domestic “oeconomy” of the early modern period. With the ability to sustain human life through periods of food scarcity, stale bread also constituted the “zero degree” of subsistence. Using artists’ manuals published in France during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this paper catalogues and analyzes the operations stale bread performed in the early modern French studio, where it found its way as a multivalent material capable of reversing time. By looking at the rhetoric that formed around stale bread’s ability to reverse mistakes and erase traces of material processes, this article reflects on the reassurance and emotional relief that it provided.