The interpretation of two mid-16th Century paintings from the Low Countries

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The era was one of religious turmoil following the distribution of Martin Luther’s theses in 1517. The preachers of the reformed church taught that the production and display of any sort of image was a form of idolatry, both inside the church and out. This message culminated in the iconoclasm of 1566, in which churches in Antwerp, Ghent, Mechelen, Amsterdam and others were invaded and their paintings and altarpieces destroyed. However, knowing that this change of thought was abroad, artists had sought other clients than the church for their work, other markets, and, therefore, other themes for their paintings. Thus, the artists were torn between two stools: the first to attract new customers, and secondly, to portray the religious messages that hitherto had been their bread and butter. To many of the artists the religious moral was important, to others they revelled in being able to paint themes that they preferred. One, Pieter Aertsen, who lived from 1509 to 1575, was central in this tumultuous time. His main product, well valued by the churches of his time, was the altarpiece with its religious story and moral. He was famous and his paintings hung in all those churches that were vandalized in the iconoclasm. He was distraught because he had thought that these paintings were his legacy to the world. Now they were gone. Yet, being a realistic man, he set about painting other themes and indulging in his pet interest … the market and its varied and colourful offerings of vegetables, meat, and fish. In walking around the markets, principally in Antwerp, he was fascinated by the colours and shapes that he saw. Yet, the church would not buy a market scene and his private clients saw the market often. There was nothing new in that. So Pieter Aertsen hit on two other types of painting … first, a picture of the market, which carried a moral message of sin and virtue, and second, a picture of the market which carried the titillating message of sex. Both sold well to the right clients. One painting, entitled, perhaps in modern days, “A market scene with Christ and the Adulterous Woman,” shows four people selling their wares in a market. The man on the left of the picture is selling onions to a central woman surrounded by cabbages. On her left another seller holds a cock and has at his side a basket of eggs. The colours are beautiful and rich and the food looks as though it is worth taking home to one’s kitchen However, behind this group, connected to it by floor tiling is another scene… a purely religious painting of Christ defending the adulteress against criticism. He writes on the floor: “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.” That’s the moral of the painting. Pieter Aertsen has cleverly combined the two sections of his painting. The seller with the onions is offering an aphrodisiac, the woman with the cabbages is offering female curves, and the other seller with eggs is defining the issue as sex, while he holds the cock directly below the adulteress in the rear picture showing that copulation was the problem Thus. The buyer can enjoy the titillation offered by the products in the market but at the same time feeling good about the moral statement of the painting. Yet, another of Aertsen paintings, “The Egg-dance,” was produced specifically for the private buyer. It shows the main room of a brothel, in which one client is drinking and enjoying the attention of a woman who is touching him, and another drunken client who is engaged in an egg dance. The egg dance requires that the dancer, with his feet, tip an egg from a bowl, dance around it while not moving any of the objects on the floor and finally tip the bowl over the egg without breaking it. A number of people are drinking wine and laughing while they watch the dancer. The painting is full of symbolism that would take the buyer long to read. Outside the window is a vase of leeks, aphrodisiacs, and the eggs alone represent intercourse. In the corner of the room a bagpiper plays while the bag symbolises male genitalia and an upturned bowl of mussels symbolises the same for a woman. Then lest a visitor be offended, on the table lies a pack of tarot cards on whose cover is the Joker. The visitor might be persuaded perhaps that the painting is really a protest against licentiousness. However, there is no religious message and no inset religious scene in this painting.