Public Dining / The Grand Couvert 1792

The French royals took part in a daily ceremony of dining in public which dated back to the Middle Ages. This meal, known as the Royal Table, was usually eaten in the company of guests and also served to affirm the king's power. This illustration, a satire on Louis XVI (1754–1793), draws on the topic of the royal's public dining. Louis XVI is depcited as the giant Gargantua. He is seated at table with his family and feats on a huge meal brought to him by a crowd of Frenchmen.

Le ci devant grand couvert de Gargantua moderne en famille, hand-coloured etching, 1792, artist unknown, source: © The Trustees of the British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1925-0701-32, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.