4 days ago
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘A Meat Stall With the Holy Family Giving Alms' by Pieter Aertsen: More Than What Meets the Eye
Think of Dutch and Flemish still lifes, and what's likely to come to mind is a tabletop set with fruits and hard cheeses, or a lush bouquet against a blank wall, dotted with a butterfly or two. Not so in Pieter Aertsen's 'A Meat Stall With the Holy Family Giving Alms.' Painted in 1551 and hanging now at the North Carolina Museum of Art, it's considered the founding work of the Northern still-life tradition, but that hallmark picturesqueness is reserved for just a few of the objects at the stand: glistening silver-scaled fish, burnished metals, a pink-veined leaf of chard.
Otherwise, the painting brims with the gristly and visceral. Lopped-off pigs' feet sit next to a leg ham, whose cross-sectioned muscle gapes at us. Goopy, translucent fat drips off a cut of suet. The sausages' lumpy casings are unavoidably intestinal. If the picture can claim a focal point, it's the near-life-size cow's head, partly skinned to reveal muscle and veins, and with a searching eye that's trained right on us. To top it all off, Aertsen puts us up close, as if we're customers.
