The Poultry Seller

In 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, cook to Pope Pius V, printed his thousand-recipe cookbook in Rome. One of its banquet menus, the one for 28 October, calls for roast hen of India served with capers and sugar. Hen of India was the Italian name for the turkey, a Mexican bird that had reached Spain around 1520 and then moved up through Europe as an expensive novelty for grand tables.

Within about ten years of that book, Vincenzo Campi painted a woman at a Cremona stall who is halfway through plucking one. Here it is one bird among many. Poultry of every kind is piled around her, and the turkey gets handled like the rest of the stock. She has stopped pulling feathers to watch a boy beside her trying to wring a goose's neck.