Pieter Aertsen
Butcher’s Stall with the Flight into Egypt
- (aka: The Meat Stall)
- (1551), oil on wood
- 48.8 x 66.5 in. (124 x 169 cm.)
- 800 x 574 (96 KB)
Editor’s Note:
Aertsen was one of the first artists to paint “inverted still lifes,” works in which the still life elements – the temptations of the flesh in the painting above – are placed prominently in the foreground, while the narrative elements are relegated to the background. Amid all this abundance in the foreground, the left background shows the Virgin on the Flight into Egypt dispensing charity to the faithful lined up for church, while in the right background is the prodigal son in a tavern.