Joachim Beuckelaer, Brothel Scene, 1563

by Atelier Liesjes

In a dimly lit kitchen, a young woman stands by a fireplace on the left. She is wearing a white bonnet, a white smock with a yellow collar and a dark skirt with an apron; in her hand she holds a spit with a plucked chicken over the fire. In front of her stands a small round wooden table with a large piece of raw meat; on the stone floor lie a cabbage and a few cucumbers. In the centre sits a woman wearing a white bonnet and yellow sleeves, who is looking at the viewer; behind her, a man with a reddish beard and a brownish-yellow doublet has his arm around her. On the right, a young woman is pouring wine from a dark jug, and on the table a baby in a red-and-white outfit is crawling towards a plate of roast birds. Beuckelaer constructs the scene like a stage: the figures stand close together, but their gazes are directed in all directions and no one is really looking at another. The objects in the foreground – the meat, the cabbage, the jugs – are painted with great precision, whilst the faces remain flat. The colour palette is warm and rich: ochre yellow, carmine red, brown and ivory white, with a touch of cool blue here and there. In the doorway behind them, a garden glows in the sun, where an old woman sits on a bench; this contrast between the dark room and the light courtyard lends the whole scene an air of mystery. Joachim Beuckelaer (Antwerp c. 1533 – c. 1575) was a Flemish painter who apprenticed under his uncle Pieter Aertsen and established market and kitchen scenes as an independent genre. For him, the meal is not a secondary element but the central motif: he piles vegetables, fish and poultry in the foreground and places people behind them who are eating, drinking and trading.