AngloItalia - Biscuits etc

Biscuits, etc
JOHN MARTIN John Martin was a nineteenth century painter well known for large paintings of epic themes such as those exhibited in the Laing Art Gallery Newcastle upon Tyne. He partly owes his skill to training in the studio of Bonifacio Musso an Italian painter/enameller with whom he travelled to London to make his living. ‘Bridge over chaos’ is part of a set of illustrations for Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ a much illustrated heavenly epic comparable in some ways to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.
	GARIBALDI BISCUITS Referred to by children as ‘fly sandwiches’ (imagining bluebottles instead of currants between thin pastry casing) the naming of ‘Garibaldi biscuits’ could be related to his Tyneside visit in 1854. Midst a warm welcome he was ceremonially presented with an inscribed sword and telescope. Maybe Garibaldi’s entourage dispensed these biscuits to the locals who enjoyed them so much that a few years later Peak Freans began profitable manufacture. Wikipedia records; ‘Popular with British consumers as a snack for nearly 150 years, the Garibaldi biscuit is conventionally consumed with a beverage such as tea or coffee, into which it may be dunked in informal social settings.’