Christ in the House of Mary and Martha
Pieter de Bloot (1601–1658)
1637
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Pieter de Bloot spent his entire professional career in Rotterdam and is best known for works of this type, but also for his landscapes. He was a prolific painter, but the present panel is both among the most exquisitely judged and most immaculately preserved of all his surviving productions.
By this date, independent still life was well established as a genre, but here De Bloot was consciously harking back to the works of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer in the second half of the previous century, in which still-life elements occupied the foreground, but were in a sense legitimated by the inclusion of a small-scale background vignette showing a religious scene. In the present instance, the trio to the left represents the classic Biblical expression of the respective merits of faith and work, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, a group in the shadow of the Ten Commandments hanging behind them whose figure style indicates that De Bloot had studied the early works of his slightly younger contemporary, Rembrandt (1606–69). Between their space and ours is a splendidly abundant display of admittedly modest foodstuffs and vessels made of metal and earthenware, which allow the artist to show of his virtuosity in the rendering of different surfaces and textures, and above all the ways they respond to light. In a charming touch, the cat of the house has taken advantage of its mistresses’ rapt attention to Jesus’s words, and is unobtrusively scoffing one of the fishes presumably intended for their next meal.
- Material/technique
- oil on panel
- Measurements
- 47 × 66 cm
- Acquisition
- acquired in 1787 by Prince Alois I von Liechtenstein
- Artists/makers/authors
- Pieter de Bloot
- Inventory number
- GE 663
- Signature/inscriptions content only available in German
- bez. am Zettel in der Mauernische rechts: P. de Bloot 1637
- Provenance
- acquired in 1787 by Prince Alois I von Liechtenstein
- Iconography
- Scenes from the life of Christ
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