Italian or Spanish school; mid-17th century.
"Kitchen Scene".
Oil on canvas. Re-decorated in the 18th century.
It has a period frame with damages caused by xylophages.
Measurements. 80 x 104 cm; 101 x 126 cm (frame).
Two characters are arranged around a table, sharing with each other a moment of leisure and displeasure. The artist reflects in the apparently simple image with a couple gathered around a sober wooden table. However, the scene is highly complex in terms of both the composition and the multiplicity of elements in the image, which combines different genres such as still life, portraiture and genre painting.
Although it is not a still life in the strict sense of the word, as the artist has created an image of greater pictorial complexity, as if it were a portrait of the corner of a kitchen of the period, this is one of the most characteristic still life paintings of the Baroque period. Although the interest in reality in Baroque painting was originally linked to religious approaches, it led to the acquisition of independent artistic status for a series of themes linked to nature and everyday life which, until the end of the 16th century, had only been depicted alongside traditional subjects, i.e. religious and mythological works and portraits. Thus flowers, fruit, landscapes, animals, etc., became the absolute protagonists of paintings in the Baroque period. The social changes of the period, the development of picaresque literature and a sense of political decadence led to the development of this type of imagery, which was close to a naturalistic trend. Costumbrista painting is a genre in which popular types and attitudes, behaviour, values and habits common to a specific group of the population, region or class are described by means of a satirical, nostalgic or narrative description of the environments, customs, dress, festivals and entertainments, traditions, trades and representative types of a society. The idea of costumbrismo arose from an attempt to understand reality, or more precisely, reality understood in a particular way, from a specific point of view.