Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Velazquez painted this around 1618, in Seville, when he was about 19 and had just finished his apprenticeship. He was working in a genre the Spanish called bodegones, ordinary kitchen and tavern scenes, and he clearly relished the everyday stuff. In the foreground a young maid pounds garlic in a mortar, her face flushed and a little sullen. On the table sit eggs, a wrinkled red pepper, two fish, a jug. An older woman beside her points off to one side. Follow the finger and you reach a small scene set into the wall, framed like a hatch, where Christ sits talking in the house of Martha and Mary. The link between the two is left deliberately open. The tired girl in the kitchen seems to be weighing the same choice as Martha, whether to keep working or to stop and listen.