Joachim Beuckelaer

Joachim Beuckelaer filled his canvases with food. Heaps of cabbages, fish, poultry and fruit spill across market stalls and kitchen tables, tended by solid, life-size market women, while a small religious scene plays out in the background. The contrast was the point: earthly plenty in front, a reminder of higher things behind.

He was born in Antwerp around 1533, probably trained with his uncle Pieter Aertsen, and became a master in the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1560. His Four Elements series, in which Air, Earth, Fire and Water are shown through market and kitchen scenes, is in the National Gallery, London, and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary uses the same idea in a kitchen. Modestly regarded in his lifetime, his work later fed into the kitchen scenes of Velázquez and the still lifes of Frans Snyders.

Look past the produce to find the tiny biblical figures in the distance.