Beuckelaer and the Art of Dining: Northern Painting, Food, and Social Class in Early Modern Italy

Sixteenth-century Flemish painter Joachim Beuckelaer produced dozens of large-scale paintings of contemporary working women and men selling, presenting, and preparing a visually stunning array of foodstuffs for the viewer. These were new subjects in Antwerp and even newer in Italy, where elite merchants and nobles like Margaret of Parma displayed them as they were meant to be displayed: in dining rooms and spaces used for entertaining. This study explores the cross-cultural meanings of Beuc...