Pieter Aertsen (1509 – 1575)

Pieter Aertsen (1509 – 1575)  Dutch Mannerist Painter.

Pieter Aertsen called Lange Pier (“Tall Pete”) because of his height, was a Dutch painter in the style of Northern Mannerism, who invented the monumental genre scene combining still life and genre painting, and very often also including a biblical scene in the background. He was born and died in Amsterdam, in his lifetime a relatively minor city, and painted there but mainly in Antwerp, then the centre of artistic life in the Netherlands. His genre scenes were influential on later Flemish Baroque painting, and also in Italy, and his peasant scenes preceded by a few years the much better-known paintings produced in Antwerp by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

During his first years in Antwerp he was mainly commissioned to make altarpieces for Dutch churches. Before long he also started to paint scenes from peasant life and he gained a reputation for his paintings of market scenes and “kitchen” tableaux, which contained an abundance of fruit, fish, poultry, cheese, bread and much more.

Renowned today as the painter of “kitchens” (Christ with Maria and Martha), featuring an opulent and familiar realism, he is in fact a varied and ambitious painter, tackling both religious compositions, genre scenes and portrait: his career can be traced between 1543 and 1571 with a series of signed and dated artworks. Today he is considered as important as Bruegel among 16th century painting: a powerful and monumental artist, using splendid and frank tones, announcing the Flemish still-life developments with such realism and surcharge of details.

His compositions packed at the front with vegetables reflect a mannerist pathos specific to the 16th century; however if religious figuration is often relegated in the background in a subordinated position (a scheme that will later have much success, among his younger cousin and pupil Beuckelaer for instance, who took over this style of painting and developed it further), the religious painter should not be ignored, with such massive formats and powerful ambitions. He was tormented by iconoclasts and practiced a heroic and dignified style, close to and competing with Floris.

Pieter Aertsen was a member of Antwerp’s equivalent of the Accademia di San Luca. In the official books of the Academy he is known as “Langhe Peter, schilder” (Tall Peter, painter). His sons Pieter, Aert, and Dirk became acclaimed painters, and other notable pupils trained in his workshop included Stradanus and Aertsen’s nephew, Joachim Beuckelaer, who continued to develop Aertsen’s formula.

Aersten’s exact formula of still life and genre figures in the foreground, with small scenes from history painting in the background only persisted for the next generation (or two, as Joachim Wtewael painted some similar works), but history paintings with very prominent and profuse still life elements in the foreground were produced by Rubens and his generation, and in the 17th century both Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting developed important genres of independent still life subjects, which were just occasionally produced in Aertsen’s day.

Unlike Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Aertsen’s genre figures were mostly depicted (especially the women) idealized with considerable dignity and no effort at comedy, using poses that ultimately derived from classical art, and in some cases appear to have been borrowed from the contemporary court portraiture of artists such as Anthonis Mor. Two unusual individual genre portraits (probably not actual individuals) of female cooks in Genoa and Brussels, one full-length and the other in the three-quarter length format devised by Titian for royal portraits, show them holding roasting spits with poultry rather as though they were marshall’s batons.