施しをする聖家族のいる肉屋

In 1551 Pieter Aertsen was working in Antwerp, then the richest trading city in northern Europe, and he did something that still looks strange. He filled almost the whole panel with a butcher's stall, piled with slabs of meat, a pig's head, sausages, fish, and pretzels, and pushed the sacred story into the far distance. Look past the meat and you find the Virgin Mary on the road during the flight into Egypt, leaning down to hand bread to a poor child. The abundance up front is the point of the contrast. It stands for appetite and plenty, set against the small act of mercy going on behind it. It was among the earliest pictures to give ordinary food, rather than a saint or a story, the place of honour at the very front.