Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
1568.Room 056
The foreground shows an everyday scene of a kitchen filled with still-life elements and two women at work. In the background, beneath a portico, Jesus can be seen visiting the house of Martha and Mary, as is told in the book of Luke (Luke 10, 38-42). This Bible story is appropriate for emphasizing spirituality over material things. The abundance of objects in the foreground, recalling the opulence of the wealthy Flemish, is surpassed by the importance of the religious event depicted in the background. This approach breaks with the traditional thematic hierarchy and was characteristic among Flemish artists of that time. It had a considerable influence on Diego Velázquez´s early works. In this work, Beuckalaer combines the realist capacity to represent objects, which was characteristic of northern art, with the use of architectural elements, such as the portico, drawn from a knowledge of Italian art theory.
