Kitchen Interior

interior

In this painting Beuckelaer illustrated the widespread notion that food and heat are the source of unbridled sexuality and excess of all kinds. The servant's gesture with her hand on a cabbage, symbol of an excessively luxurious and spendthrift life, may duplicate the licentious scene in the background.

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About the Artist

Joachim Beuckelaer

1530 – 1574

Netherlandish painter of large still lifes, market and kitchen pieces - active in Antwerp. Beuckelaer was the nephew and pupil of Pieter Aertsen, and he followed his uncle's preference for scenes in which a religious subject is relegated to the background by the still life or genre content ( The Cook, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). He seems to have been the first painter to depict fish stalls.

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