Taste

This is one of five panels on the five senses, and it grew out of a friendship. Jan Brueghel painted the setting, all that heaped food and the busy kitchen behind, while his close friend Rubens added the figures, the nymph at the table and the satyr pouring her wine. Look at what surrounds her: oysters, fowl, fruit, pies, a lobster, game hanging ready. There's a reason the table is this loaded. It was painted around 1618 in Antwerp, during the Twelve Years' Truce, the single long pause in the war between the Catholic south and the Dutch republic to the north. For a decade the port was open again and the city was wealthy, and Brueghel was the painter everyone wanted for exactly this kind of dense, glittering plenty. The series was made for the archdukes who governed the southern Netherlands, and it also showed off just how much a Flemish table could hold.