The Four Elements: Air

Beuckelaer dated this canvas 1570, in years of economic hardship and religious upheaval in the Netherlands, and gave it a market stall piled high with food. Of the four elements, air belongs to the birds. A young stallholder in a red shirt lifts two hens by their feet, dead birds lie in baskets next to a heap of eggs, and more poultry waits under a wicker cage. At the front a young woman holds a cockerel upside down and looks straight out at us, her other hand resting on a big brass jug. The Bible story is small and easy to miss. Somewhere in the crowded square behind, a figure in red trousers is the Prodigal Son, wasting his inheritance on riotous living. The painter signed and dated the picture on the barrel under that jug.