Pieter Aertsen The Meat Stall 1551 Oil on Panel 48 1/2" x 59" North Carolina Museum of Art For close-ups of this work and to see this virtually at the North Carolina Museum of Art see: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/fgF8j5tB3UFgAg Like his younger contemporary, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Aertsen lived and worked in the Northern Netherlandish city of Antwerp, a mercantile center with great wealth and a dynamic market for art in the 16th century. The city of Antwerp, in present-day Belgium, and Northern Europe as a whole, after Martin Luther's Protestations against the Catholic Church in 1517, was marked by iconoclastic movements - the destruction of religious images and works of art. Antwerp developed into a thriving art center as artists sought patrons outside the Church, and independently sought commissions through art dealers. The shift in subject matter, focusing less on overt religious iconography, is a strong one for regions of Europe that converted to Protestantism. This shift is evident in the work of art here by Pieter Aertsen, known as The Meat Stall. His painting is an example of the incorporation of both religious themes and the subject of genre, that is, the subject of everyday, ordinary, and peasant life. How so? Well, let's take a close look…follow the link to the Google Arts and Culture link above to pan in on details. APOTROPAIC DEVICES |