The Fishmongers

Vincenzo Campi painted four big canvases of food in Cremona around 1580, and the museum reads them as a probable set of the four elements. This one is Water, and the reading is easy to follow. A river runs back into low hills where a fishing party is still at work, and everything they have brought in fills the front of the picture. A girl tips fresh fish onto the stall. At a small table a man and a woman eat without looking up, while beside them a child howls because a crayfish has got hold of him. The overdone faces were the usual way of painting humble people in those years. The fish themselves are handled with complete care, kind by kind, close enough to be told apart.