Mask and Crustaceans

In Catholic Belgium, Carnival ended on Shrove Tuesday and the forty days of Lent began, the fast before Easter, when meat gave way to fish. Ensor painted this small oak panel in 1891 as a joke on that switch. On a plank set across two boxes he laid out a Lenten table that looks nothing like a penance. There is a herring on a white napkin, a big fish head, a red lobster, a crab on its back, a bottle and a glass of wine. At the far left, a figure with a white Pierrot face and a chef's hat looks on. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp reads it as a parody of the meagre meals of the fast, and its technical study found the words "vive carême", long live Lent, written diagonally above the table and later painted out. The little black mask hanging below the lobster was added last, over varnish that had not yet dried, which is why that patch is so heavily cracked.