The Kitchen Maid

A vast array of provisions is displayed in a pantry. The literature of the age reveals this to be more than a simple inventory of every available type of food. The forms of vegetables, fruits, fish and poultry were, as in medicine, associated with the shape of the human reproductive organs. Consequently, the foods exhibited here all have possible hidden…

A vast array of provisions is displayed in a pantry. The literature of the age reveals this to be more than a simple inventory of every available type of food. The forms of vegetables, fruits, fish and poultry were, as in medicine, associated with the shape of the human reproductive organs. Consequently, the foods exhibited here all have possible hidden meanings. The gestures of the beautifully dressed kitchen maid – her right hand rests on a cabbage, while she offers a bunch of grapes with the left – leaves no doubt that this painting is about fertility and eroticism. Such scenes were very popular amongst the nobility and bourgeoisie