The Slaughtered Ox

A whole ox hangs split open from a beam, and the date 1566 is painted on the threshold beneath it, with van Cleve's monogram over the door. Late autumn was slaughtering time in the Low Countries, when a household killed its beast and salted the meat for winter. Around the carcass the scene is busy. The butcher takes a drink, a dog noses for scraps, and children play with the animal's bladder, blown up like a ball. The Vienna museum reads these details as a warning about the brevity of life and the emptiness of living for the belly. Almost 90 years later Rembrandt painted a slaughtered ox of his own, now in the Louvre, keeping of all the figures only a woman at a doorway.