The Cook

In 1559 the painter Pieter Aertsen showed a cook standing in front of a great fireplace, on a panel more than one and a half metres tall, holding a spit loaded with poultry the way a commander holds his baton. That picture is now in Brussels. About a century later, around 1665, Gabriel Metsu painted the same kind of figure, a young cook with a bird on the spit, on an oak panel less than 30 centimetres high. The museum explains why it can be read two ways. It points to the rabbit, set out very prominently, and to the bare, plucked chicken pierced by the spit. Rabbits and poultry were known for how readily they bred, and so both served as emblems of sensual pleasure and lust.