It is a multisensory experience which, before passing through the mouth, invests the nose and ears. How many times have we heard a coffee pot mutter and then that strong scent spread around the room. Coffee is a call that knocks on our senses. But also an excuse for a little sociality.
Intellectual curiosities
The binomial coffee-artists, better if cursed, seems to be somewhat guessed. The dark color, the origin from an exotic land, the mysteries that things carry over time. To consider it only a drink would be disqualifying. If it could animate what kind would it be? Hardly a plump and phlegmatic gentleman; rather a dude with determination and character. It should not surprise us if in the 500s coffee got the label of devil's drink. It came from a land of Muslim faith, was black as darkness and had exciting effects. The church condemned him, even thinking of excommunicating him.
But then the priests changed their minds. After all, a blessing would have been enough to appease all the darkness of the drink. And so with the baptism of coffee, operated by Pope Clement VIII, the food was free from all evil. But the energizing properties were still real, capable of charging inspiration and thought. It is above all the man of the eighteenth century to consolidate the couple coffee-artists; the century of the Enlightenment decreed the fortune of the black drink. Which makes us understand that what we ingest is not just food. Several writers saw it as a precious workmate and also an obsession. I drink forty coffees a day to be awake and think, think, think about how to fight tyrants and idiots. So Voltaire used to say. Music also found a good friend in coffee, so much so that Bach dedicated a cantata to it.
Coffee in art
Before landing in the paintings, the coffee began to make room on the tables of the premises. The forerunner was the eclectic Venice which, with its fortunate geographical position, easily accessed the novelties of the East. The known Florian, still active today, marked the birth in 1720 of the Italian coffees. A drink for the few, expensive and which also became gift of love and a means of courtship. Meanwhile, the people consoled themselves with the chicory substitute. Today it is a democratic drink, one thing for everyone but it took time for that. Art made its contribution.
Edward Hopper in his realistic canvases made it become a comforting element for single characters. We see it in the Night owls as also in Automatic, where a young woman is portrayed absorbed in front of the cup in a practically deserted room. But the coffee it's not just a bar thing, it is also domestic. This tells us clearly Cézanne in a painting with a speaking title: Woman with coffee maker. But the list of dedicated paintings is long and goes through multiple authors. Manet, Munch, Van Gogh. Coffee begins to become a meeting place, theopportunity to share thoughts. A bit like our it.caffè.
And the medicine ...
The coffee ended up coloring even the pages of historical medicine. It is in the treaty of Prospero Alpino that the therapeutic peculiarities are mentioned, not of the drink but above all of the plant. As a botanist the author of the De plantis Aegypti he carefully studied the coffee plants, providing accurate descriptions. As a doctor praised its curative virtues. A miraculous remedy for liver, spleen, stomach, uterus and colds.
