The First Bite Eve, Fruit, Mouth, Home, Pubis, Snake, Marisa V
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Abstract
The first food of which there has been a verbal and plastic record in the Mediterranean basin is that related to the mythical bite that a creature took from the piece of fruit that someone had forbidden others to eat. That first bite was executed by a symbolic woman to give rise to the human species: so that, standing up, against the celestial laws and to defend itself from nature, the journey of knowledge would begin. The brotherhood of eating and knowledge, the communion of culture and pleasure, was established at the origin. Here we analyze some exemplary cases of how, based on literature, art attributed appearance to that event: it designed a stage, built a set and dramatized an action that expressed desires through images. From Dürer to Oliveira, from Cranach to Marisa Vadillo, the persistence of the symbolic apple is evident, which, once The Garden of Earthly Delights was annihilated, would give rise to the invention of the great refectory that is the city.