A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms
| A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms | |
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| Artist | Pieter Aertsen |
| Year | 1551 |
| Medium | Oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 115.6 cm × 165 cm (3' 10" × 5' 5" ) |
| Location | North Carolina Museum of Art, Amsterdam, Netherlands |
A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms is a painting by the Netherlandish artist Pieter Aertsen (1508–1575). A large painting, it depicts a peasant market scene, with an abundance of meats and other foods. In the background, it shows a scene from the biblical theme of the flight into Egypt, where the Virgin Mary is seen stopped on the road, giving alms to the poor. Thus, although the painting seems to be at first sight an ordinary still life concentrating on foodstuffs, it is rich with symbolism; it in fact hides a symbolic religious meaning, and embodies a visual metaphor encouraging spiritual life. Aertsen made a name for himself during the 1550s painting scenes from everyday life in a naturalistic manner.
Pieter Aertsen was a masterful still-life painter from Amsterdam, who worked for many years in Antwerp. He was a representative of the 16th-century Northern Renaissance style, more specifically Northern Mannerism, a new era for painting in the Netherlands and the German countries characterised by precise observation and naturalism that gave the art of painting impulses of realism. Many Northern artists travelled to Italy to study, where they were influenced by the innovations of the Italian Renaissance and in turn influenced the Italian Renaissance painters with techniques such as the newly developed technique of oil painting.
Aertsen is regarded as one of the founders of the still life painting. His style was particularly new: he mixed characteristics of the still life and the genre painting in his works, which, like A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms, are seen as pioneers in the still life genre that grew out of details of paintings containing figure subjects. His compositions in the Flemish tradition were remarkably original, like this painting of a meat stall, with a large, life-size still life in the foreground and three smaller scenes appearing through openings in the background.
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