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Genre Painting and the World's Kitchen

“T me what you eat, I will tell you who you are,” boasted famed gastronome Jean Anthelme BrillatSavarin (1755–1826) (1). A man of many interests, among them archaeology, astronomy, and chemistry, Savarin wrote treatises on economics and history, but his fascination with food was what most informed and entertained readers and followers in his native France and around the world. In nature and on the table, quite apart from its direct link to human survival, food has been an object of intrigue featured prominently in art throughout history. From ancient times and particularly during the development of genre painting in the Middle Ages and later, food—its appearance, abundance, or decay—has been a popular subject. In 17th-century Spain, genre painting (scenes of everyday life) reached new heights with the work of Diego Velázquez. In a style reminiscent of Caravaggio, Velázquez created and popularized a new genre, the kitchen or tavern scene (bodegón), which showed peasants eating or preparing meals and the objects they used to assemble and serve them. These objects (still life), prominently displayed in realistic terms including their imperfections, assumed a life of their own, introducing a new naturalism in Spanish painting, which had been dominated by the ideal beauty of classical and academic themes (2). Velázquez grew up in the cosmopolitan climate of Seville, southern Spain, along the banks of the Guadalquivir, an area also home to Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and other luminaries of the Spanish Golden Age. Like the great literature of that era, his art concerned itself with the life, culture, and traditions of the people. He apprenticed with influential biographer, theoretician, and artist Francisco Pacheco, who later wrote about his student: “After five years of education and training, I married him to my daughter, moved by his virtue, integrity, and good parts and by the expectations of his disposition and great talent” (3). Soon a member of the Seville painters’ guild, Velázquez moved from bodegón to portraits and was summoned to