Kitchen Interior

Before it reached the Louvre in 1928, this kitchen had passed through some of the grandest collections in Europe. Following the historian Lorne Campbell, the museum traces it back to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, then to Queen Christina of Sweden, and on to England, where an inventory taken at Whitehall in 1660 lists a picture matching its subject and size among the paintings of Charles II. It stayed with the English crown under James II and Queen Anne. By the early 20th century it belonged to a collector in Valenciennes, in northern France. Around 1918 German forces moved it to Brussels, and its owner got it back after the war.

The panel is dated Anno domini 1566 at the upper right, with the monogram I. B. at the upper left. A young kitchen maid looks straight out at us, her hands on a basket of cabbage and other vegetables. The table beside her is heaped with a side of meat, a duck, game birds, bread and jugs, and a cockerel hangs from the beam next to a salmon steak. Far back, by the fire, a man puts his arm around a woman as she cooks.