Joachim Beuckelaer
The Four Elements

Lorne Campbell, 2014

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings before 1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2014).

Provenance

By 1884, the four paintings, with a fifth also attributed to Beuckelaer, were in Room 12 of the gallery of the Palazzo Panciatichi (entrance via di Pinti 62), Florence.¹ The palace and the paintings belonged to Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona (1813–1897), Marchese di Saturnia e d’Esche (Esche being in Bavaria). Ferdinando had made important additions to the ‘already considerable’ collections formed by his ancestors.²The Four Elements could have come to him from his Panciatichi ancestors or from the Ximenes d’Aragona; alternatively, he could have inherited them from the Guicciardini, Valori or Pecori families.³ The Marchese died in 1897, leaving his property to his great‐grandchildren. Their grandmother, the Marchese’s daughter Marianna Paolucci, had a life interest and decided to sell the collection – except portraits of members of the Panciatichi and Ximenes families and objects decorated with their coats of arms. The sale, directed by Galardelli and Mazzoni, took place on 3 April 1902 and the following days. The Beuckelaers, still in Room 12 (‘Salle L’), were sold as lot 165 on 11 April: ‘BEUCKELAER JOACHIM (1570) (Signé) LE MARCHE au gibier – le Marché aux légumes – le Marché aux poissons et la Cuisine. Quatre magnifiques compositions sur toile, pour décoration de salle à manger. Cadres dorés. M. 1.55 × 2.12.’ Air was reproduced in the sale catalogue. The next lot, 166, was obviously the fifth painting mentioned in 1884: ‘BEUCKELAER JOACHIM (1570) JEUNE BONNE au Marché. Cadre doré. Bois. M.1.55 × 1.95.’⁴ The names of the purchasers have not been discovered; the fifth painting has not been traced.

In the Friedländer Archives at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, are old photographs of three of the Four Elements. On the back of the photograph of Air, someone – probably not Friedländer himself – has written ‘Verz[ameling] Langevelt‐Campens/Bruxelles/Rue Royale/161 [or 61]’.⁵ Modeste Langevelt (1871–1914) dealt in pictures and in 1912 was living at 202 rue Royale in Brussels. In 1899 he married, as his second wife, Elvire Marthe Campens (born 1871).⁶ She would appear to have been the ‘Langevelt‐Campens’ whose name is written on the back of Friedländer’s photograph.

By 1942 the four pictures were in the possession of Robert Goffinet (1886–1945) who owned two adjoining houses at 167–169 rue de la Loi, Brussels. His nephew Jean Goffinet remembered seeing them in that year at 167 rue de la Loi. This house had belonged to Robert Goffinet’s mother Jeanne Quairier, widow of General Théodule Goffinet (1851–1907) and daughter of Joseph Quairier, Avocat à la Cour de Cassation and Directeur de la Société Générale de Belgique. It seems likely that the pictures had belonged to Jeanne Goffinet‐Quairier, who might have inherited them from her father. She died in 1930.⁷ At the Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique in Brussels are old photographs of the four paintings ‘possibly taken about 1930–40 by the photographer Becker of Brussels’: no one knows when or where the negatives were made.⁸

The four pictures, probably in the possession of the Goffinet family by 1930 and certainly owned by Robert Goffinet in 1942, passed to Robert’s brother Louis Goffinet (1892–1959), who lived at the château of Hyon, south of Mons. He left his property to his wife (Marie‐Louise‐Augusta Bouilliart de Saint‐Symphorien); after her death in February 1979, their heirs sold the paintings and the château (bought from them on 14 November 1980 and demolished in 1983).⁹

The paintings were eventually taken to a bank in Brussels, where they were under the care of two dealers, René Reding and F. De Scheemaecker. Offered for sale to the City of Antwerp, they were shown on 4 November 1981 to Carl Van de Velde. He was told that they had come from a castle near Mons; the [page 104][page 105][page 106][page 107]owner’s name was not disclosed.¹⁰ Shortly afterwards, apparently in 1982, they were sold to Herman Van Roey, a collector, who was advised by the art historian Paul Verbraeken and who in 1986 lent them to the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent. They were the centrepiece of the exhibition Joachim Beuckelaer, Het markt‐en keukenstuk in de Nederlanden 1550–1650, 12 December 1986 to 8 March 1987, and remained on public view at the museum until Mr Van Roey sent them to Christie’s, London, where they were sold on 13 December 2000 (lot 25) to the dealer Robert Noortman, Maastricht. They were bought for £3,323,821.88 from Robert Noortman in 2001, the purchase funded by the American Friends of the National Gallery, London.

Exhibitions

Ghent 1986–7 (8–11); Antwerp 1993 (B 57: NG 6585 only); Antwerp and Lisbon 1998–9 (D 5–8); Bristol 2005 (NG 6585 and NG 6588 only); Newcastle 2005 (all four); NG 2005 (all four).

Versions

• A copy after NG 6586, Water, was sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 20 April 1989 (lot 216), as ‘Manner of Pieter Aertsen’. Canvas, 147.9 × 212.7 cm.
• A free copy after NG 6586, Water, was exhibited in 1926 at the Malmö Museum, Sweden, ‘Utställning av en samling äldre målningar’ , no. 7: panel, 172 × 232 cm (fig. 7).
• The figure of the old lady in the lower left corner of NG 6586, Water, was adapted in a Poultry Market by a follower of Beuckelaer once with the dealer Heineman in Wiesbaden (panel, 111 × 132 cm).¹¹
• A painting similar to no. 3 above was once with a London dealer named S. Bolton.¹²
• A copy after NG 6588, Fire, is in the Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum of Arts, Kiev, 1961 catalogue no. 66, canvas, 161 × 215 cm, monogrammed GT (fig. 8). Acquired in 1956 from the Direction of Art Exhibitions and Panoramas of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR.

As these versions are known only from black and white photographs or reproductions, it is not possible to say whether any of them reproduces its original in a state before the smalt became badly deteriorated.

Many of the objects, birds, animals and buildings depicted in the Four Elements recur in other paintings by Beuckelaer and his followers. The same workshop drawings or studies were probably being re‐used: see pp. 133–4 below.

Technical Notes

All four canvases have been lined and restretched. The only restoration of which any record is known took place shortly before the Ghent exhibition of 1986–7. It was carried out by Jan Van Looveren and Martine Brodelet and has been described in a report by Jan Van Looveren. He commented on a previous restoration, thought to have taken place towards the end of the nineteenth century, presumably in Florence.¹³ Van Looveren praised the skill and thoroughness of the earlier treatment and the excellent quality of the materials used. He described his own intervention as minimal. The old varnish was thinned or removed, old overpaint and loose fillings were removed, all losses were filled and retouched. Included in his study are useful diagrams that indicate losses, fillings and areas from which overpaint has been removed. The four pictures may all be described as well preserved, though they have suffered small accidental damages and the lining process has flattened several areas of impasted paint.

The appearance of all four pictures has been seriously affected by the deterioration of the areas painted with smalt, which were once blue and purple. In samples it is apparent that most of the smalt particles have lost their blue colour and are now colourless; the oil medium around the particles is a heavily discoloured yellow or yellow‐brown. In addition to this colour change, the paint has become blanched and [page 108]cloudy: this is evident in the patchy appearance of these areas. In the ‘Description’ below, attempts have been made to indicate the probable original colours of the areas of degraded paint.

All four pictures are canvases, each with one horizontal seam. All four have been lined with canvas of similar weave and weight.¹⁴ They were then mounted on softwood stretchers;¹⁵ but none is perfectly aligned with its stretcher. Narrow strips of the lining canvases are visible at some edges, as are small areas of the painted black bands that enclosed each composition. The stretcher sizes are: Earth, 157.8 cm (left) – 158.0 cm (right) × 215.4 cm (top) – 215.2 cm (bottom); Water, 157.9 cm (left) – 158.1 cm (right) × 214.7 cm (top) – 214.9 cm (bottom); Air, 157.8 cm (left) – 158.0 (right) × 215.6 cm (top) – 216.0 cm (bottom); Fire, 157.5 cm (left) – 158.2 cm (right) × 215.4 cm (top) – 215.0 cm (bottom).

The canvases are tabby woven. Those of Earth and Water, both dated 1569, are less fine than those of Air and Fire, both dated 1570. In all cases, strips of canvas of the same weight have been sewn together. Earth and Water have 15 horizontal threads per cm and between 15 and 16 vertical threads per cm. Air and Fire have between 17 and 18 horizontal threads per cm and between 18 and 20 vertical threads per cm. None of the seams is perfectly horizontal. The measurements from the lower edges of the stretchers are: Earth, 44.7 cm (left) – 43.7 cm (right); Water, 51.1 cm (left) – 53.0 cm (right); Air, 44.5 cm (left) – 46.4 cm (right); and Fire, 51.6 cm (left) – 49.4 cm (right).

Bands of black paint are visible at many of the edges of the original canvases (fig. 9). This black paint is in some, if not all, places applied on top of original paint but it seems itself to be original and to have defined the painted surfaces, framing the area to be shown. They were at least 1.3 cm wide – the width of the widest surviving area of black, at the left side of the lower edge of Water. The missing black bands would have been trimmed away as part of the lining process. The measurements within the black bands are: Earth, 157.3 × 215.4 cm; Water, 157.8 × 214.9 cm; Air, 157.2 × 214.8 cm; and Fire, 157.9 × 214.8 cm. As the Antwerp foot measured 28.68 cm, the images were 5½ × 7½ Antwerp feet (=157.74 × 215.1cm).

Marks left by old stretcher bars lie diagonally across all four corners of Fire; but this old stretcher was probably not original. The first owners may have had them stretched over panels or on strainers with fixed corners. On the reverses of the present stretchers and the modern frames are various stencils, labels and chalk marks, none of which is of any immediate interest. The Christie’s stencil TG 559 is on the stretchers of Water and Fire.

The canvas for the two paintings dated 1569 has been prepared with a red ground bound in oil consisting of calcium carbonate (probably in the form of chalk), red earth, some silica (quartz) and some red lead. The red lead has reacted with the oil medium forming large agglomerates of lead soaps that protrude through the layers above. These agglomerates are large enough to be visible to the naked eye and to make the paint surface look lumpy. A further preparation layer of lead white, perhaps with traces of red lead, lies over the first red layer. Where the preparation is not covered by paint it is evident that, together, these layers give a salmon‐pink colour.

The preparation on the two canvases dated 1570 is of a similar hue but of a slightly lighter colour. The first layer is predominantly calcium carbonate (chalk) with some poorly dispersed red lead pigment in agglomerates, some silica (quartz) and a very small amount of earth pigment. The lower proportion of red pigment and the greater amount of calcium carbonate explain why it is lighter than in the earlier paintings. This ground appears to be bound in oil and again there is significant lead soap formation, although overall it is not as extensive as in the earlier paintings, probably because there is less red lead. This first layer is again covered by a second white or off‐white layer.

A great deal of freely executed underdrawing is present in all four paintings (figs 11, 12); it is visible in places where the paint has become more transparent with age and, more completely, in infrared reflectograms. This sketchy underdrawing is in black, over the primings, and the character of the lines, as well as its appearance in a sample, suggests a liquid medium (fig. 11). There are also ruled lines, mainly in the architecture (fig. 10). In one sample, from a line ruled for the edge of a building, in the sky in the top left section of Water, the material of the black underdrawing seems to be graphite, which would be a sensible choice for ruling lines.

For still‐life elements preliminary drawings have been employed that Beuckelaer also used in other pictures, but there are no signs that mechanical techniques of reproduction such as tracing were used. They would have been copied freehand, sometimes on much the same scale as in the other paintings; but comparison of traced overlays confirms that Beuckelaer reproduced his own drawings freehand and adjusted scale and detail as he wished.¹⁶ The artichokes in [page 109][page 110]Earth, for example (fig. 13), match very closely artichokes in the Vegetable and Fruit Market (Antwerp), dated 1567 (fig. 14), but the drawing made visible in infrared images is very sketchy, merely an indication that artichokes were to be placed there. No underdrawing could be found for the painted artichokes, which must have been copied and adjusted by eye (fig. 15).

The figures in the fore‐ and middle grounds are underdrawn with very bold black lines which are similar in style to Beuckelaer’s grisaille ‘drawings’ in oil on paper, for example the Joshua tricked by the Gibeonites in the J. Paul Getty Museum (90.GG.133) (fig. 16).¹⁷ That these lines are underdrawings is confirmed in the two main figures in Earth, whose heads were drawn, in this style, facing away from each other (figs 17, 18). No black drawing was used for the heads as they were finally painted. In Air , the boy and the women in the middle ground have this bold black underdrawing, but the two main foreground figures do not (fig. 19). Why this picture should be different is not clear.

The changes to the heads of the women in Earth were made after painting had begun (white paint for the head covering of the woman on the right is clearly visible in infrared images: fig. 18). Numerous other changes, made during painting, can be seen in all four paintings.

The consequences of Beuckelaer’s use of the unstable blue pigment smalt have already been mentioned. It is present in the sky of all the paintings, now generally a greyish‐cream colour, except for small patches in Air where the blue colour is better preserved. The creamy‐pink clouds are a mixture of lead white, red lake and smalt and may have been more mauve in colour originally. Beuckelaer also used smalt extensively in the garments of the figures, which now range in colour from pinkish brown to bluish grey but would originally have been a variety of purple and blue hues.¹⁸ Although the smalt‐containing paint is sometimes mixed with some red lake to make purple or mauve, the range of tones was generally achieved by varying the colour of the undermodelling. The sleeves of the woman standing in the foreground of Air, for example (figs 19, 38), have an undermodelling that is purplish pink in the mid‐tones, just visible at the surface where the paint is thin. The undermodelling darkens in the shadows to a deep red, containing only red lake – as seen in a paint cross‐section where it lies beneath greyish‐brown smalt‐containing paint. Not only has the smalt lost its colour, but the paint as a whole has blanched and become more opaque, so that the effect of transparent blue over red producing a deep purple blue has been lost. In her bodice the underpaint is darker, consisting of red lake mixed with some black, and is again covered with smalt‐containing paint which would once have given a slightly different, deeper purple‐blue shade. There is also pink undermodelling in her apron, covered more completely by the upper smalt‐containing paint, which has developed a more yellow‐brown colour than in her other garments; this was evidently intended to be yet another shade of purple‐blue or mauve. These techniques are repeated in the other paintings.

Smalt was not the only blue pigment used in the paintings. Azurite of small particle size and greenish‐blue colour is a [page 111]component of the mixed greens in the backgrounds and some of the green or blue‐green paint of the fruit and vegetables in the still lifes. It is mixed with lead white and lead‐tin yellow in the lighter, more opaque areas, or mixed with yellow lake in the deeper greens, such as those of the leaves of the trees. Similar mixtures are used for the green draperies of small figures in the backgrounds, like the dress of the woman sitting by the hearth in Fire. The deep, more saturated green garments of the foreground figures are instead based on verdigris mixed with a little lead‐tin yellow. In the skirt of the woman standing [page 112]on the left in Air (fig. 38), it is thickly applied on a relatively thin warm grey underpaint of lead white, black and a little vermilion. In the green skirt of the woman in the centre of Fire, the underpaint is a greener grey of lead white, black, azurite and a little lead‐tin yellow.

Red lake was used not only in purples but also for pink and red draperies, where it was shown to have been prepared with cochineal dyestuff, most probably of the New World variety, extracted from dyed silk shearings.¹⁹ Both the pinkish‐red and the more orange‐red hues are generally underpainted in an opaque mixture of red earth, lead white, red lead and red lake. In the former, however, there is further modelling based mainly on red lake, while the latter is modelled with a mixture similar in all respects but one to that of the underpaint: it contains vermilion instead of red earth. In the deepest shadows, both are glazed with red lake mixed with colourless powdered glass.²⁰ The strong yellows in some of the garments consist of a yellow earth of unusually intense hue mixed with lead‐tin yellow.

The theory that Beuckelaer was impecunious and therefore economised by using the cheapest pigments is not borne out by examination of the Four Elements.²¹

The medium was identified as heat‐bodied linseed oil in the majority of the samples analysed, although walnut oil, generally heat‐bodied, was found in samples of white paint. In one sample, from translucent green paint on the drapery of the woman in the foreground of NG 6588, there was evidence of the addition of a small amount of pine resin.

Beuckelaer’s brushwork and the remarkable and apparently effortless skill of his application of paint are discussed on pp. 133–4 below.

Description

Earth

The two women in the foreground, often called stall‐holders, appear to be buying, rather than selling, fruit and vegetables. The woman on our left has half‐filled her shopping basket with apples; the woman on our right holds up a huge cabbage, perhaps for her companion’s approval. The sellers, who should logically be with the spectator on the other side of the produce, are probably the couple on our right, who seem to be preparing vegetables for display and sale. In the background on our left, Joseph, Mary and the Christ Child cross a bridge, evidently on their way into Egypt.

The woman on the left, who may be standing in a hollow in the landscape, has yellowish‐brown hair, brown eyes with slightly greyish lights and very dark eyebrows (fig. 20). She is painted from a model frequently used by Beuckelaer,²² for example for the woman second from our left in Water and probably also for the central figure in Fire, where she wears the same red jacket that appears in Earth and reappears, worn by another model, in Air. This jacket, seen in several other [page 113]paintings by Beuckelaer, seems to have been one of his studio props.²³ Under the red jacket, the woman in Earth wears a white partlet with a ruched high collar and a yellow stomacher over which are grey laces. She has rolled up her sleeves to expose the cuffs of her white chemise and protects her purplish skirt (just visible below her shopping basket) with a long apron, which was once purple or purple‐blue but is now, because the paint has discoloured, yellowish brown. The apron and rolled‐up sleeves show that she is a servant who does manual work, though her clothes seem to be made of good quality materials and she is by no means poor. Her companion, evidently of similar status, has blue eyes and yellowish, frizzy hair (fig. 20). The same model reappears, similarly dressed, on the left in Fire, where her eyes are brownish with greyish lights, and perhaps also on the extreme right in Water, where her eyes are hazel. In Earth she wears an elaborate headdress made of nearly transparent, and therefore expensive, white cloths. In places the hanging veils are so diaphanous that the well‐head is clearly visible through at least two thicknesses of fabric. The veils, worn over a cap of similar material, are held in shape with wires and secured to her head with clips. Like her companion, she has a white shirt, exposed at the cuffs and here also at the armpit, where it is pulled through the gap between the separate yellow sleeve and the yellow‐brown bodice, which was originally blue or purplish blue. The bodice is open at the front to reveal a reddish stomacher supported by blackish laces. Over this is a white partlet with a ruched high collar; the partlet is not secured at the back. The woman’s dull red skirt is protected by an apron, now discoloured but once purplish or purplish blue, of a hue different from that of her bodice.

The enormous cabbage that she holds occupies so central and so important a position that it invites some comment. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cabbages were imported into England by the hundreds and thousands from the Low Countries and elsewhere.²⁴ Whether these cabbages were of spectacular size or of special varieties is not clear. The large one in NG 6585 is a ‘Tritian cabbage’, which, according to Pliny, had ‘outstanding flavour’ but which, by the time of Rembert Dodoens (1517–1585), the physician and botanist, was the Latin name for the ordinary white cabbage. Pliny stated that the Tritian cabbage was produced by earthing up the shoots as soon as they appeared: this took twice the usual outlay and trouble and the product was therefore a luxury food.²⁵ Dodoens reported that cabbages, like radishes, encouraged menstruation. They may have been credited with contraceptive properties.²⁶ Cabbages were also seen as enemies of the vineyards and of mirth, playfulness and delight.²⁷ Beuckelaer’s prominent cabbage could have been interpreted in many different ways. Obviously he must have liked its colour and shape and must have thought that it would look well in its central position.

The woman holding the cabbage is sitting on a conveniently placed hillock. Beside her is a wooden wheelbarrow, its wheel bound with iron; its shafts are level with the bottom of the box. The signature and monogram are on the diagonal strut (fig. 1). A similar wheelbarrow is seen in the foreground of the Market Square with the Ecce Homo (Vienna, Schottenstift), dated 1564, while similar, though not identical, barrows appear in the Woman selling Fruit and Vegetables (Valenciennes), dated 1563, and the Women selling Fruit and Vegetables (known from copies, for example at Bratislava: fig. 21). In Earth, there are on top of the barrow three circular trays made of wicker (fig. 22). They are similar in design but differ in scale, the one on our right being the largest. On the tray on our left are a cauliflower, trimmed of its outer leaves, apples and pea‐pods. Similar cauliflowers, evidently painted from the same preliminary sketch, appear in other pictures by Beuckelaer.²⁸ On the smaller tray are green and purple grapes, peaches and plums of different varieties. Similar grapes, evidently painted from the same preliminary sketches, appear in at least one other painting by Beuckelaer (fig. 23).²⁹ On the large tray are peapods, apples, pears, cherries and gooseberries. Resting on top of the last two trays are two dishes made of glazed earthenware. One contains strawberries, the other mulberries.

On the left is a tower of baskets and vegetables. In the lower left corner, the basket with a handle appears to be empty; it seems to be supported on a small shelf but tilts below the frame. Next to it, the very large circular(?) basket contains pink and orange carrots, two marrows, several gherkins or cucumbers, two white radishes and a bunch of shallots. In a shallower, round basket resting on top of the last are a pumpkin, several cabbages and at least one cucumber. In the round wicker tray behind, similar in structure to those resting in the wheelbarrow, are three more green and four pink cabbages. Behind, in a rectangular(?) basket with a handle, are two(?) melons and several artichokes (fig. 13). Similar artichokes, evidently painted from the same preliminary sketch, appear in at least five other pictures by Beuckelaer (figs 14, 23).³⁰ Behind the last basket is another, half hidden in shadow, containing two red cabbages.

Behind the woman with yellow sleeves is a well, the well‐head surrounded by a wall of greyish stone(?), stained brown and green. The date 1569, in yellow‐brown, appears on the well‐head (fig. 2). Similar well‐heads appear in several other pictures by Beuckelaer.³¹ Against the wall of the well‐head hangs a wooden bucket, bound with iron hoops and secured to an iron chain, fixed with a ring to a rope suspended from a pulley. This hangs from the wooden pole, covered with moss or fungus, directly behind the woman’s head. Her hat conceals the other end of the rope. Between her and the well is a stone basin that contains a cabbage. Strewn on the ground in front of the basin and the well are more cabbages, carrots, turnips, a pumpkin and a marrow. The wooden tub contains more cabbages and a carrot; another three carrots lie on the ground under the wheelbarrow beneath the trees. Leaning on the well‐head is a man with red‐brown hair and a reddish, snub nose (fig. 55). He wears a red cap, a yellow jacket, a grey shirt and red hose or trousers. His companion has her hair plaited and wound around her head (fig. 24). Her partlet is white, her bodice and skirt are pink, her chemise is white, she does not wear separate sleeves, and her discoloured apron, originally blue, is now yellowish. She would seem to have brought vegetables to the well in her basket and wheelbarrow and to be washing them before displaying them for sale with the produce in the foreground.

Among the trees in the top left corner is a grey house with a chimney and a steeply pitched roof. Behind is a group of brownish, gabled houses, beyond which a large pepper‐pot tower rises above the horizon. This settlement is divided from the rest of the landscape by a ravine spanned by an arched stone bridge (fig. 25). Its stepped parapets seem inadequate and it is not clear how it is connected with the small grey stone building on the near side of the ravine. Its entrance is in the wall on our right and is approached from a flight of steps stained with green. On one of the steps is a white bowl, perhaps a receptacle for offerings. In the niche in the wall facing the bridge is a statue of a scantily clad woman with a spear in her left hand and an oval shield resting against her right hand and leg. The building is perhaps a small temple; the statue is perhaps an image of a goddess of antiquity – possibly Minerva or one of the idols of Egypt that fell from their pedestals as the Holy Family passed (compare Isaiah 19:1). Similar landscapes and bridges appear in the Two Women and a Man selling Poultry, dated 1563 (Salzburg), in the painting of the same subject dated 1564 (Moscow), in the Woman selling Fruit and Vegetables dated 1564 (Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh), in the undated Couple selling Vegetables (Budapest), [page 116]and in the versions of the Couple selling Poultry, Fruit and Vegetables (fig. 26).³²

The Virgin, seated on a donkey, wears a white veil and a blue mantle; a yellowish (straw?) hat is tied across her back; the Child’s head is just visible above her right shoulder (fig. 25). Both she and the Child have circular yellow haloes which float above their heads. Saint Joseph leads the donkey. He wears a red mantle over a bluish robe and grey trousers and approaches a figure who seems to be seated on the parapet of the bridge and who is probably a beggar. The beggar’s hair, or perhaps his hat, is white; his shirt is red; his legs are bare. He gestures with his left hand towards his basket. It is not clear in which direction the Holy Family will advance; the road may sweep round towards us along the near bank of the ravine.

In the centre is a large building constructed mainly of wattle and daub. The crow‐stepped gable at the far end, however, is of red brick and there is a central brick chimney stack, without chimney pots. The thatched roof is broken by a dormer window from which hang two glazed, long‐necked [page 117]pots and from which rises a knotty pole. The pots are apparently ‘starling‐pots’ or nesting‐boxes and the pole is probably a perch, put there to encourage small birds to frequent the site. This building may provide living accommodation for servants.

The red brick building behind and perpendicular to the last has a brick crow‐stepped gable, a grey, probably slated, roof and a chimney‐stack without visible chimney‐pots. It is possibly a small country mansion. The two wooden gates between these buildings and the well‐head differ in design and do not appear to close together in any very adequate way. Both are hung on hinges; they may be constructed in this way so that they can be used for separating animals from the main flock, as in certain sheep‐pens or fanks.³³ Beyond the well, the roofed structure, supported on poles but apparently without walls, may be a covered gate or barn for sheltering farm vehicles.³⁴ Behind are more buildings – apparently a village on the horizon.

Water

The fish are being sold from a sandy beach, scattered with mussel shells, marked by rippling waves and drained by a small stream which meanders under the arch and across the sandy shore to the sea: the Sea of Galilee or Tiberias, where the (second) miraculous draught of fishes takes place (John 21:1–11).³⁵

The old woman on the left and the man on the right are selling the fish: the woman seems to specialise in freshwater fish, the man in sea fish. They ignore their customers, who are behind them, and appear to be offering their fish to the spectator. Old women similarly dressed appear in other paintings by Beuckelaer, for example at the centre right of the Market Square with the Calling of Matthew (Naples), dated 1566, and on the extreme right of the Fish Market (private collection), dated 1568. In Water, she has blue‐grey eyes and wears a shaggy red hat over a white cap and a white veil.³⁶ What may seem to be black veils are in fact shadows wrongly reconstructed by a restorer. Over a white shirt she wears a white partlet and over that a V‐shaped garment of black, quilted(?) material with an attached pink collar. Only the shoulders and skirt of her dress are visible. They are green; her stomacher is yellow and is held under brownish laces that pass through metal eyelets; her apron is now pinkish red but has altered. The man, who has widely spaced brown eyes, asymmetrical eyebrows, a straight nose, a rather large ear, curly brown hair and an irregularly distributed beard, reappears in other paintings by Beuckelaer: for example, the Poultry Sellers, dated 1 September 1563 (sold at Phillips’s, London, 3 July 1990, lot 74); the Augsburg and Osterley versions of a Couple selling Poultry, Fruit and Vegetables (fig. 26);³⁷ or the Genoa Two Women and a Man selling Poultry (see p. 93, fig. 2). Since all these heads look like self portraits, and the Genoa head in particular resembles rather closely the portrait of Beuckelaer engraved in 1610 by Hendrik Hondius,³⁸ it is possible that Beuckelaer used himself as a model for all these figures. The man is kneeling on one knee – his right knee touches the ground behind the ray in the lower right corner. His bolero is red and is tied with a greyish lace; his sleeves are yellow; his loose trousers are red and are protected by a pleated grey skirt, evidently worn as an apron.³⁹ From his black, plaited(?) belt, tied behind his left elbow, hangs from a metal ring a brown, pleated bag, very similar to the bag in the Osterley Couple selling Poultry (fig. 26). He has evidently been chopping up fish with the large knife resting on the table behind his right arm. Similar knives are found in other paintings by Beuckelaer.⁴⁰

The fish are displayed in various containers that rest on trestles and tables. In the lower left corner, three mussel shells may be resting on the sand. On the thickness of the board in front of the old woman are the signature, monogram and date, painted in grey (fig. 3). On the extreme left, an earthenware dish of sprats and/or immature herring rests in a circular wooden platter supported on trestles. A comparable large wooden platter lies in front of the woman and contains three carp, two pike (figs 27, 28) and two tench. She lays her left hand on the twisted metal handle of a wooden bucket that is filled with water and contains one unidentified fish. Behind her left arm is a tub of plaice. In front of the man is a basket of large cod. Behind them are two steaks cut from a salmon; behind them, in a round wooden platter, are a silver bream, a rudd and two perch. In the metal pan behind is another carp. In the lower right corner, resting on an earthenware [page 118]plate supported on a wooden block or box, is a female thornback ray (raja clavata); its body cavity has been opened and the lobes of its liver protrude (fig. 30). In the top right corner, on a wooden platter, are three herring (fig. 29). They have been gutted. As they look soft and flabby, they may not be very fresh.⁴¹ Similar fish, evidently painted from the same sketches, appear in several other paintings by Beuckelaer.⁴²

The five women behind the trestles and tables are prospective customers. The woman on the left, painted from the same model as the first woman in Earth, wears a white partlet over a blue bodice, a red stomacher secured with green laces, a red skirt and a discoloured, brownish apron that was originally purple‐blue. On her head she balances a wicker tray of cheese and perhaps also butter, partially wrapped in white cloths, while over her left arm she carries a dented brass(?) vessel which is evidently empty. The woman behind her carries on her head a similar brass(?) vessel which may be full of liquid. She wears a white snood and a red jacket and carries a basket over her right arm. The next figure, evidently a lady of higher rank, wears a black mantle or huik that falls from her head across a white, wired headdress (fig. 31). Her bodice is brownish grey and she may be wearing a grey apron; from her necklace hangs a pendant pearl. Beside her, the young lady in profile also wears a black huik. The woman on the right, who has hazel eyes and light brown hair, may have been painted from the same model as the central figure in Earth and the woman on the left in Fire. All are similarly dressed. The woman in Water wears a hat made of a fabric so fine and transparent that the coils of hair behind her right ear are visible through two thicknesses of the material. Her partlet and shirt are white. Her bodice would once have been a stronger blue and her sleeves, which are a light greyish pink in the highlights and mid‐tones and grey in the shadows, would have been a stronger mauve or purplish blue: the paint in these areas seems to have discoloured. She rests her right hand – which is disproportionately large – on the metal pan containing a carp. It is difficult to make sense of the edifice [page 119]in the top right corner which, altered during the course of painting, appears to be built of brown brick and to defy logic of structure.

Behind the three women are trees, a stone gable and two stone towers. Nothing separates these buildings from the fish market, though the stone and brick arch, overgrown with ivy and other plants, divides the market from the sandy seashore. The sea is the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias, on which takes place the second Miraculous Draught of Fishes (fig. 32).⁴³ Peter, James and John, Thomas, Nathaniel and two other disciples, who had had an unsuccessful night’s fishing, saw on the shore the resurrected Christ, whom they did not at first recognise. He told them to cast the net on the right side of the ship, where they caught a great multitude of fish. Realising that the man on the shore was Christ, Peter cast himself into the sea. Here two of the disciples are hauling in their catch; Peter, raising his hands in prayer, advances through the water towards Christ who, apparently naked but for his shroud, raises both hands in greeting. A second ship, its anchor weighed, appears to have been beached.

The arch connects uneasily with a large house built of brick and grey stone; its windows are glazed or protected by shutters decorated with patterns of triangles. From the cellar emerges, through a door similarly decorated, a man wearing a green jacket and a long apron (fig. 34). Such angled entries to cellar staircases were once common in Brabant and Flanders.⁴⁴ On the left a broad street leads towards a city gate.

The buildings are brick except the greenish stone tower, identifiable as the medieval Rode Poort or ‘Red Gate’ of Antwerp (fig. 33).⁴⁵ The true name of the gate, which was not red, was the Roederpoort, the gate of the reclaimed land. Built in 1317, it was replaced in about 1550 by a modern gate but the tower with its surmounting ‘observatory’ was retained until all the old fortifications were demolished during the 1860s.⁴⁶

Beuckelaer’s workshop was probably in the Ossenmarkt, from which he could have looked along the Rodestraat, past the Begijnenhof, towards the Rode Poort. The street, however, is not to be taken as an accurate rendering of the Rodestraat. The buildings on our left cast very distinct shadows across the street and on the houses on the right. In the street, the foremost man appears to be a soldier, walking with a mincing gait and wearing slashed yellow breeches and pink bands crossed over his blue jacket. A man turns and gestures with his right hand as he addresses a woman in a pink dress which she has kilted up to reveal its blue lining. Near the gate stands a tall sentry who wears a Spanish morion, a visorless helmet. Crossing his feet, he leans on a halberd and wears a sword. No face has been painted.

Comparable views of similar buildings and a similar arch are included in Beuckelaer’s Couple selling Poultry, also dated 1569 (Naples: fig. 35).

Air

A youth is selling poultry and other produce, apparently in the corner of a market square in a town built on the banks of a river or estuary. In the opposite corner of the square another young man, evidently the Prodigal Son, dallies with a woman of the market. He is wasting ‘his substance with riotous living … with harlots’ (Luke 15:13 and 15:30).

The youth in the foreground has curly brown hair and brown eyes (fig. 40). His mouth is open, perhaps to imply that he is speaking, though the impression that his teeth and tongue are visible is deceptive – the ‘teeth’ are in fact damages. He seems to have been painted from the same model as the young man, there bearded, in Beuckelaer’s Couple selling Poultry, Vegetables, etc., dated 1567 (Antwerp, Rockoxhuis: p. 97, fig. 6) and in his Butcher’s Shop (Naples), dated 1568 (fig. 36). He wears a jacket of pink silk or satin, a surprisingly rich garment for a street vendor. Similar jackets are worn by the young man in the Rockoxhuis picture, beneath his bolero, and by the youth in the lower left corner of Beuckelaer’s Vegetable and Fruit Market, also dated 1567, in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (p. 97, fig. 7). In Air, the jacket is worn over a green garment. The youth’s loose trousers are purple‐pink and seem to be made of woollen cloth; he is seated and splays his legs around the hen‐coop, his right leg being visible through the coop. In his left hand he holds by the feet two hens, one pale brown, the other white and black. He exhibits them for sale and from their flapping wings drift small feathers which float across the coop and the wicker tray below (fig. 37). Beuckelaer has referred to drawings of hands and hens that he used in the Naples Couple selling Poultry of 1569 (fig. 35) and in the Genoa Poultry Sellers of 1564 (see p. 93, fig. 2: compare the standing woman’s left hand and the hens in her right hand). Similar coops reappear in many of Beuckelaer’s pictures, for example the Naples and Genoa paintings, where the dead ducks draped across the coops resemble the duck placed, in Air, on the barrel in front of the young man. The duck draped across his coop recurs in the lower left corners of the Naples and Genoa compositions. All these ducks are evidently domesticated rather than wild birds. Behind the coop are a large glazed earthenware pot and a wooden barrel lying on its side. Behind the youth’s stool is a wooden table or box, on which he rests his right hand and on which is placed a basket containing goods wrapped in a white cloth. The coop rests on another, smaller barrel. In the lower right corner are stacked a cylindrical, greyish cheese and three yellowish, disc‐shaped cheeses, very like the three cheeses similarly stacked behind the dead duck in the Genoa painting. Next to the cheeses is another barrel on top of which is a red glazed plate supporting two prints of butter(?), partially wrapped in a (wet?) white cloth. Similar dishes of butter, differently marked, are found in other paintings by Beuckelaer, Aertsen and their contemporaries (see p. 96, fig. 5).⁴⁷ In the centre of the foreground, resting on a fifth barrel, is a wicker tray, similar to those seen in Earth. It is partially covered by a pink cloth and [page 123]on it lie the bodies of two domesticated pigeons (they differ in plumage from their feral ancestor the rock dove), a small cockerel and a quail. On the earthenware plate, which is partially glazed in dark green, are two dead domesticated grey rabbits (wild rabbits are brown). Next to them is a basket of eggs, big enough to be ducks’ rather than hens’ eggs; they are packed in straw.

In the foreground on the left are two women shoppers, dressed in much the same way as the principals of Earth and presumably of similar status. The younger woman on the left has grey‐brown eyes and reddish‐brown hair, plaited and tied with a grey ribbon (fig. 38). She seems to have been painted from the same model who reappears in several other paintings by Beuckelaer, for example the Couple selling Poultry and Vegetables in the Rockoxhuis (p. 97, fig. 6). She is probably also the woman on the left in Earth and the central figure in the Genoa Two Women and a Man selling Poultry (see p. 93, fig. 2). In Air, she wears a white partlet over a bodice that was once purple or purple‐blue and a white shirt; her detachable sleeves, now greyish pink in the highlights and grey in the shadows, were originally of a mauve hue (with bluer shadows) and her bodice is tied with greenish and black laces across a reddish stomacher. Her skirt is green and her apron appears to have been purple or purple‐blue, but of a shade different from that in the bodice and sleeves. Over her right arm, she carries a shopping basket partially covered by a white cloth. In her right hand she holds by the feet a handsome cockerel (fig. 39); she rests her left hand on a brass vessel similar to that carried by the young woman on the left in Water and that behind the turkey in Fire. Here it rests on yet another – a sixth – barrel, on which are inscribed the signature and date (fig. 4). The basket behind her contains nothing except a few wisps of straw. The older woman, seated behind the brass vessel, has brown eyes and brown hair; she may have been painted from the same model as the older of Beuckelaer’s Two Market Women, dated 1561 (Vienna: p. 93, fig. 1); she wears the same [page 124][page 125]red jacket that reappears there, in Earth and in Fire, as well as in several other paintings by Beuckelaer. Here the jacket has a pink lining. Her stomacher is dull green; her apron, now brown, was once blue or purple‐blue. The women in the middle ground, three on our left, two on our right, are ladies of higher status, each of whom wears a black huik.

In the street behind, people of various ranks go about their business. The Prodigal Son, who has brown hair and a short brown beard, wears a yellowish jacket over a green vest; his loose trousers are light red. In his left hand he holds up two white cockerels, which he may have removed from the coop at his feet. With his right hand he fondles the knee of the woman behind him, who touches his arms and rests her left hand on her baskets of dairy produce. The brown object beneath her skirts may be a foot‐warmer, similar to the one used by the young woman in the Couple selling Poultry and Vegetables of 1567 (Rockoxhuis: p. 97, fig. 6). Another woman, whose head is uncovered, bends over the coop to remove or replace a bird. Behind her are two men: the man on our right appears to carry a sword but this is in fact a damage. Next to him are two people conversing with each other and a seated man wearing a black hat and a blue mantle. A white‐haired workman is transporting cheeses on a sled (fig. 40). They have perhaps been unloaded from the boat behind them, where a mariner lowers a furled sail. The barrels on the quay may have been part of the cargo of this boat, which, unfreighted, floats higher in the water than the boat alongside.

The buildings on the left are constructed from brick and stone, though wooden extensions are attached to some of them. The upper lights of the windows are usually glazed, while the lower lights have shutters. A stone archway, through which three persons are passing, must give onto a side street or a courtyard. The large house behind, with its round turret, is very similar to the building in the centre of Beuckelaer’s Naples Fish Market, dated 1570 (fig. 41). The round tower near the quay is similar to the tower in the top left corner of Beuckelaer’s Stockholm Fish Market, also dated 1570. The poles projecting from the crow‐stepped gables may be perches for birds. On the shore, the gateway flanked by two towers may give onto a causeway leading across the estuary. People are passing under the raised portcullis. More buildings are just visible on the further shore and another boat, under full sail, floats in the centre of the water.

Like the gateway on the shore, the stone archway on our right, overgrown with moss, ivy and small trees, has no immediately obvious defensive purpose. A wall links the archway with the tower by the quay, perhaps one of several bastions defending a large walled enclosure surrounding the fortified palatial edifices built of brick that are seen through the arch. All the towers are surmounted by spikes, which, as they cannot be lightning conductors, may be purely ornamental.

Fire

In a large and well‐stocked kitchen, four female servants are preparing and cooking food. In the spacious adjoining room, Christ speaks to Martha and Mary (Luke 10: 38–42).

The kitchen, which has a brick floor⁴⁸ and a wooden ceiling, occupies the entire width of a commodious house, apparently in the country. The window on our left and the door on our right give onto open landscape. An outside staircase near this door must lead to an upper storey; the door on the left opens into a passage from which two steps lead upwards into the room where Christ is seated (fig. 42). The window frame is of grey stone. The upper lights are glazed and barred; each of the lower lights has two wooden shutters that can be closed by attaching them to the metal catches in the mullion. Below the window is a narrow wooden table on which rests a basket containing cheeses and rolls and an earthenware jug with a hinged metal lid. An identical jug is near the right edge, above the basket. On the lintel above the doorway on our left is the date 1570, written in brownish‐grey figures [page 126][page 127](fig. 6). The elaborate fireplace is of grey stone; the architectural ornament derives from woodcuts in editions of Serlio’s Architettura. On the mantelshelf is an unlit candle in a brass candlestick (fig. 43). On the far side of the fireplace is a wooden sideboard with metal fittings. A similar, though not the same, sideboard appears in the Kitchen Scene, dated 1569, which was sold in New York in 2005. In Fire, an open lattice door reveals that the sideboard contains a brown earthenware jug, a white cloth and a stack of pewter dishes. On top of the sideboard are pewter plates standing against the wall, two glazed earthenware vessels and four two‐handled brass pots, one of which lies sideways across the mouth of another. In front are two brass candlesticks and a pewter flagon. On the shelf above are pewter plates and two pewter flagons; a pewter tankard hangs from the centre of the shelf. Above the outside door hang three glazed earthenware tankards with hinged metal lids (a tankard very like the central one appears on the right, above the partridge). A ham hangs from the beam above the doorway.

On the right is a wooden dresser. Comparable dressers appear on the left of Beuckelaer’s Kitchen, dated 1566 (Louvre), in some of his other kitchen scenes and in his Butcher’s Shop of 1568 (Naples: fig. 36). The dresser here does not seem to fit squarely into the kitchen, perhaps because Beuckelaer has severely distorted the perspective. From metal hooks along the upper sections of the dresser hang a brass pot or ewer (suspended from a metal chain), a hind‐quarter of mutton (fig. 45), a dead female(?) turkey (fig. 44), a glazed pot with a handle, and a dead hen with rather exotic orange‐brown and grey plumage (fig. 46). A similar turkey, seen from a [page 128]different angle and perhaps based on another drawing of the same bird, appears in the undated Still Life with Christ on the Road to Emmaus (Mauritshuis). Turkeys, introduced into Europe from the New World, evidently bred well, were quickly established and soon became readily and fairly cheaply available. Preparing for a banquet in London in 1555, the cooks were able to buy two adult turkeys and four turkey chicks for 4 shillings each. Swans, in contrast, cost 10 shillings each, while pike cost 2s. 6d. or 3s. apiece.⁴⁹ In Fire, a white cloth, ironed into an intricate pattern of folds, is pinned behind the turkey. Similar cloths are found, in association with uncooked meats, in paintings by Aertsen and Beuckelaer, for instance Beuckelaer’s Flayed Pig of 1563 (Cologne), his Christ in the House of Martha and Mary of 1565 (Stockholm), his Kitchen of 1566 (Louvre) and his Butcher’s Shop dated 1568 (Naples: fig. 36). On the flat surface below the cloth rest a basket of lemons (or oranges?), a pewter flagon, a glazed earthenware tankard with a hinged metal lid and an earthenware bowl, its exterior glazed in brown, its interior glazed in dull green. The signature and monogram appear on the edge of this shelf, [page 129]on the left of the turkey (fig. 5). On a rectangular table in front of the dresser are a large brass vessel, similar to those represented in Water and Air, a large glazed pot and a glazed jug with a hinged metal lid. On top of the pot rests a red glazed plate on which lies a dead common or grey partridge (perdix perdix: fig. 46). Similar partridges, always with longer legs, reappear frequently in Beuckelaer’s work, for example in the Naples Seller of Exotic Animals, dated 1566 (fig. 48), the Lemgo Still Life with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, dated 1569 (fig. 23), and the Naples Couple selling Poultry, also dated 1569 (fig. 35). In Fire, in front of the rectangular table and in the lower right corner of the composition is a round wooden table. On this table rest a dead mallard drake and two dead woodcock, lying on top of folded white napkins (fig. 49). The woodcock, which reappear in at least six other paintings by Beuckelaer, are discussed below. In Fire, they are lying in a red glazed dish. Beside them are three glasses and a covered basket containing two glasses and several bread rolls. The stacked glasses are similar to those in the Stockholm Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, dated 1565. Similar covered baskets appear, for example, in the Seller of Exotic Animals (Naples), dated 1566 (fig. 48), and the Fish Market (Stockholm), dated 1570.

The woman on our left, who has red‐brown hair and grey‐brown eyes, looks very like the woman on our right in Earth and may have been painted from the same model. She wears a white partlet over a red stomacher edged with black and contained by green laces. Her sleeves are blue; before the paint discoloured, they would have been more intense in colour. Because of the discoloration, it is difficult to be sure of the hues of her bodice and apron, but they appear to have been different shades of a light purple or mauve. Her skirt is red. In her right hand she holds a plucked fowl, its wings cut and trussed, over an earthenware bowl, glazed in light green. It rests on a wooden three‐legged(?) stool. She seems to be about to impale the fowl on the spit that she holds in her left hand. It is rectangular in cross‐section, so that meat skewered upon it will revolve with it when it is turned. A haunch of mutton lies in front of her on the green glazed earthenware dish, itself resting on a three‐legged wooden stool. The woman [page 130]in the centre (fig. 53), who has brown hair and brown‐grey eyes, may have been painted from the same model used for the woman on our left in Earth and the standing woman on our left in Water. The woman in Earth wears the same red jacket that reappears here and, on a different model, in Air, as well as in other pictures by Beuckelaer.⁵⁰ In Fire, as in Earth, she wears her jacket over a partlet, of which only the neck ruffle is here visible. Her apron seems to have been purple; her skirt is dull green. She has just plucked a fowl (fig. 50): the feathered wings and tail will be cut off before it is cooked. A few small feathers, just plucked, are flying out of the picture across the apron on the right (fig. 51) and below the right foot of the fowl.

The floor behind the two women is littered with empty mussel shells and piled with dishes, perhaps waiting to be removed and washed outside. (This kitchen has no obvious water supply.) The blackish cauldron, which has a glazed yellow‐brown interior, is partially covered by a brown glazed lid or plate on which lie two empty mussel shells. A skimmer or draining ladle, made of iron and brass, lies across the cauldron, under its handle. In the basket are a reddish glazed pot and three pewter plates. Leaning against the basket are a glazed pot, brown outside and green inside, and two more pewter plates. A wooden spoon lies across the glazed pot. A large glazed bowl, red‐brown inside and yellowish outside, lies against a pile of five(?) red, glazed plates. Behind, a reddish dish rests on another pile of four(?) red plates.

Near the fire, an ungainly young man with curly yellowish hair and darker thin side‐whiskers drinks from an earthenware jug, the top half of which is covered in a brown glaze (fig. 43). His tunic is green and he carries a grey‐brown satchel attached to his belt with a metal hook. His hose are a slightly greenish grey, his shoes blackish, and he turns in his toes. Seated on a three‐legged stool, he rests his right hand upon a cut loaf(?) that lies on a round table covered by a thin whitish cloth. It is semi‐transparent in the firelight. The pinkish object on the table, which seems to rest on a grey plate, is perhaps a lump of butter or lard, to be used for basting roasting meat. In the hearth, a fire is blazing beneath a metal contraption from which cooking pots may be suspended. The standing woman braves the flames and smoke to remove a brown pot or to raise or lower it on its ratchet. She wears a pink dress over a white shirt; her apron is light brown. Her companion, seated on a low chair with an inclined back, seems to be poking the fire with a stick held in her right hand and shielding her face from its heat with her left hand. She wears a white partlet over a green dress with detachable yellow sleeves. Her apron is white and her skirt is kilted up to reveal a pink underdress. Her shoes are black and, like the young man, she turns her toes inwards in an ungainly manner.

The inner room (fig. 42) is decorated in a fashionably antique style.⁵¹ The relief on the end wall, which, like the roundels on the ceiling, is touched with pale yellow and may be intended to look gilded, represents Moses with the Tables of the Law. It is so schematically rendered that it would be difficult to recognise the subject without comparing the more carefully rendered relief in another painting by Beuckelaer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary – this, dated 1568, was formerly with the Galerie Hoogsteder in The Hague. In Fire, the three white‐ or grey‐haired and bearded men beneath the relief are presumably apostles. They are dressed in yellow, [page 131]blue and light red. The table is covered by a green cloth. Christ, whose halo is formed of rays of whitish light (fig. 52), is dressed in a blue robe and sits in a chair draped with a light red cloth. The woman at his left hand is Mary, who ‘sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word’. Her dress is yellow; she holds a book in her right hand and rests her left hand on a greyish object, perhaps the pot from which she took ‘a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus’ (John 12: 3). The two seated women on our left are presumably disciples; the praying woman, who wears a white veil and a blue dress, is conceivably the Virgin Mary. The standing woman on our right is Martha, ‘cumbered about much serving’. She wears a white headdress, a blue dress kilted up over a green underdress, a whitish apron and black shoes. She remonstrates with Christ: ‘Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.’ Christ replies: ‘Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.’

Beuckelaer’s Patron

Joachim normally painted on panel, but occasionally on canvas. He evidently preferred to paint on panel but would have used canvas for large pictures that were to be exported. All his canvases may have been commissioned for or by foreign patrons.⁵² The Four Elements were by 1884 in Florence, in the Palazzo Panciatichi‐Ximenes d’Aragona. They are unlikely to have been brought to Italy after about 1600. As they are on canvas, they may well have been commissioned in Antwerp by a foreigner who intended to send them abroad.

Ferdinando Panciatichi (1813–1897), who in 1884 owned the Four Elements and the palace in which they hung, was said to have added valuable and old paintings to the already important collection of his family.⁵³ He had inherited the palace, and presumably many of the pictures, from his great‐uncle Ferdinando Ximenes d’Aragona (1747–1816), the last of his line. The palace had been bought in 1603 by their ancestor Sebastiano Ximenes d’Aragona (1566–1633). In 1569–70, when the Four Elements were painted, two of Sebastiano’s uncles were living in Antwerp.⁵⁴ There is a strong possibility that one of them commissioned Beuckelaer to paint the Elements.

The family descended from a Spanish Jew called Innico who, converted to Christianity, took the surname of his godfather, a Castilian nobleman. Innico’s son Ferdinando moved to Portugal; Ferdinando’s son Duarte ( c. 1500– c. 1560), a lawyer and merchant, ran his business from Lisbon but had a branch in Antwerp. It was his sons Fernão (Ferdinand, 1525–1600)⁵⁵ and Rui (Rodrigo) Nunes (1529–1581) who settled in Antwerp but who traded with most parts of the known world, from the White Sea to the Indian Ocean, from Angola to Argentina. They dealt in various commodities including spices, sugar, corn, jewels, wood, dyestuffs, textiles, books and slaves. Many other members of the family were involved in the enterprise, which had branches in Cadiz, Seville, Venice, Florence, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Cologne and elsewhere.⁵⁶

Fernão Ximenes and his brother Rui Nunes were in Antwerp by 1564. Fernão left during the iconoclast riots of 1566 and retreated to Cologne but he soon returned.⁵⁷ Listed in 1571 among the Portuguese residents in Antwerp,⁵⁸ he was in 1573 Consul of the Portuguese Nation there.⁵⁹ He left again in 1576 for France but was back in Antwerp by the summer of 1577.⁶⁰ In 1583, when the Calvinists were in control of the city, he bought a large house in the Meir.⁶¹ During the siege of 1585 he once more left for Cologne,⁶² but in 1586 and 1590 he was again Consul of the Portuguese Nation in Antwerp.⁶³ In 1586, Pope Sixtus V granted to Fernão and his whole family the right to use the Pope’s name, Peretti, and his coat of arms. When Sixtus discovered that the Ximenes were not Old Christians but descendants of a converted Jew, he withdrew the privileges.⁶⁴ The Grand Duke of Tuscany, anxious to attract to his domains men of vast wealth, gave Fernão Ximenes a palace in Pisa in 1591 and made him a Knight of Santo Stefano. Fernão and his wife Anna Lopez both died in Florence in 1600 but in 1611 their bodies were brought to Antwerp and reinterred in the cathedral.⁶⁵ Fernão was said to have left 248,000 florins to four of his nephews.⁶⁶

Fernão was a friend of the printer Plantin,⁶⁷ while the Spanish theologian and orientalist Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598), who was in Antwerp to supervise the production of the ‘Polyglot Bible’, was godfather in 1575 to Rui Nunes’s son Gonçalo Ximenes (1575–1638). Gonçalo married in 1596 Catharina van Eeckeren (1575–1635)⁶⁸ and so established connections with many of the great families of Antwerp.⁶⁹

An inventory was taken in 1617 of the contents of the house in the Meir, which had passed from Fernão to another of Rui Nunes’s sons, Emmanuel Ximenes (1564–1632).⁷⁰ Some of the pictures may have been there when the house belonged to Fernão, for example a Hercules and the Centaurs by Floris and three heads of Susanna and the Elders, also by Floris, and a portrait of Fernão and various other family portraits.⁷¹ Fernão may have established the remarkable library of books in Latin, Italian, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese and English. The subjects covered were theology, law, astrology, mathematics, history, medicine, chemistry and classical and later literature.⁷²

In 1569–70, when Beuckelaer was painting the Four Elements, Fernão was in Antwerp. In June 1570 he was one of the six deputies of the Portuguese Consul;⁷³ and on 12 June 1571 both he and his brother Rui Nunes were listed among the Portuguese resident in Antwerp.⁷⁴ Since Fernão had had to leave the city in a hurry at the time of the iconoclast riots of 1566, he must have been aware that easily portable paintings on canvas were preferable to large, heavy and cumbersome panels. If, as seems likely, he did indeed commission the Four Elements, he may not have had in mind any particular destination for them. They could have been taken from Antwerp to Florence by him or by one of his nephews and installed in the Palazzo Ximenes shortly after it was purchased in 1603 by Sebastiano Ximenes d’Aragona.

Iconography

Whether the subject of the Four Elements was chosen by the patron, probably Fernão Ximenes, or offered by Beuckelaer himself, it gave him a remarkable opportunity not only to display his talents but also to develop several of his recurring and perhaps favourite themes. It is possible that his panels of Two Women and a Man selling Poultry, dated 1564, and Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, dated 1565, came from a similar series. They are the same size, 113 × 163 cm, and both were acquired in 1910 for the Brussels museum from Madame E. Wanner at Le Havre. They could be from a very much less complex series. Though the former painting makes no obvious reference to a biblical narrative, it may conceivably represent the Prodigal Son. The two panels could have depicted Air and Fire in an earlier and smaller series of the Four Elements, painted on panel. Though that may seem dubious, it is difficult to find another explanation for the pairing of the two Brussels panels.

Earth marks the culmination of a development which started with Beuckelaer’s Two Market Women (Vienna), dated 1561 (see p. 93, fig. 1), his canvas of a Woman selling Fruit and Vegetables (Valenciennes), dated 1563, and the version on panel (Kassel), dated 1564, the Woman selling Fruit and[page 133]Vegetables (Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh), dated 1565, and the painting of the same subject (Göteborg), dated 1566, and the Vegetable and Fruit Market (Antwerp), dated 1567 (p. 97, fig. 7). The Women selling Fruit and Vegetables (Bratislava: fig. 21) is apparently a copy after a lost, independent development of the same theme.

In Water, Beuckelaer looked back to his earlier depictions of Market Squares executed between 1561 and 1566 (see p. 94, fig. 3), to his Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Getty Museum), dated 1563, and to his Fish Market with the Miraculous Draught of 1568 (private collection) and his Couple selling Fish of 1568 (versions at Strasbourg, Maastricht and elsewhere). His Fish Market (Naples), dated 1569, is closely related, while the theme is further developed in the Fish Market with the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Naples: fig. 41) and the Fish Market with the Ecce Homo (Stockholm), both dated 1570, and in the Fish Market (Antwerp), dated 1574.

In Air, Beuckelaer developed two themes: that of his Market Squares, executed between 1561 and 1566; and that of his many pictures of Poultry Sellers, executed between 1563 (Salzburg) and 1569 (Naples: fig. 35). The Two Women and a Man selling Poultry, dated 1564 (Genoa: see p. 93, fig. 2), is particularly close to NG 6587. After 1570, Beuckelaer seems to have produced only a Poultry Seller with a Woman, which was signed and dated 1574. Now lost, this was mentioned in 1911; no photograph or reproduction has been found.⁷⁵

In Fire, Beuckelaer used ideas already expressed in various still lifes (for example that dated 1562, formerly in the Held Collection) and kitchen scenes (for example the Louvre Kitchen, dated 1566). Like NG 6588, they often have subsidiary religious subjects: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Brussels, 1565; Stockholm, 1565; Amsterdam, 1566; formerly with Hoogsteder, 1568; Lemgo, 1569 [fig. 23]; Vienna, 1574), the Way to Emmaus (Mauritshuis, not dated) and the Supper at Emmaus (Brno, 1565).

All four of the London paintings are composed in similar ways. The foreground is dominated by two people: two women in Earth and Fire; a woman and a man in Water and Air. They are surrounded by still lifes heaped on baskets and a barrow (Earth), tables (Water), barrels (Air) and stools and shelves (Fire), Fire being the only scene set in an interior. In the backgrounds are the four religious subjects and four more subsidiary scenes: the couple at the well (Earth), the street (Water), the quay (Air), and the man and two women by the fireplace (Fire). All the paintings are staged by contrived and artificial means. There is no logic of space: the woman on the right in Water has no lower legs, the landscapes have little or no continuity; the interior in Fire is seen in an uneasily distorted and totally artificial perspective. Because of the accuracy of detail, however, all four scenes seem completely credible. Objects seem in danger of falling out of pictures into the spectator’s space and indeed the feathers from the flapping fowl in Air and the plucked fowl in Fire seem to float between pictorial and real space. In Water, Air and Fire, several protagonists look out of the picture at the spectator. The colours fade and become paler as they recede, which helps to clarify the complicated arrangements in depth.

In all four paintings the season is summer, for the trees are fully in leaf. In Earth, however, Beuckelaer has assembled vegetables and fruits that ripen at different times of year. As the historical evidence shows and as the archaeological evidence of excavated cesspits confirms, the fruit and vegetables were readily available in their seasons and were consumed by the ordinary people of Flanders and Brabant, where agricultural technologies were the most advanced in Europe.⁷⁶ Similarly, the foods represented in Water, Air and Fire – even the turkey in Fire – did not include any exotic or expensive items. Beuckelaer has aimed to give impressions of great abundance and enormous variety, without ostentation or extravagance. It is perhaps worth emphasising that he has not made any reference to payment in any of the four pictures.

Executed in 1569–70, the Four Elements were created in a time of cruel political and religious repression and severe economic recession. The dreadful winter of 1564–5 was followed by more bad weather and poor harvests.⁷⁷ The people of the Low Countries depended on imports, particularly of Baltic grain, for about one quarter of their food. Wars in the Baltic, as well as pirates and privateers, disrupted shipping. The Duke of Alba, Captain‐General in the Netherlands between 1567 and 1573, imposed high taxes and was to be satirised in a parody of the Lord’s Prayer, circulated in Ghent in March 1572, over a year after Beuckelaer had completed his Elements, as:

Beuckelaer’s paintings may represent a vanished or imaginary Golden Age, when all kinds of food were easily available.

Beuckelaer at Work

Beuckelaer must have worked constantly from life and would have made drawn and painted sketches.⁷⁹ He knew several models whom he used frequently and kept a wardrobe of clothes in which he dressed them. He also studied animals, birds, fish, household objects, interiors and landscapes. None of these sketches has been identified. We can, however, deduce that he kept and exploited with great efficiency his archive of sketches, though he rarely repeated exactly the same figure, the same landscape or the same interior. The baby who is Saint Matthew’s angel in the Four Evangelists (Dresden), dated 1567, recurs, reversed and with a different arm, in the Holy Kindred with Saint Anne (Copenhagen), also dated 1567. The street on the left of Water was used again in the Couple selling Poultry of 1569 (Naples: fig. 35): this street is unusual in showing a recognisable building, the Rode Poort of Antwerp. The only other building recognised in Beuckelaer’s paintings is the Antwerp Exchange, seen in the Seller of Exotic Animals (Naples: fig. 48), dated 1566. Some of his interiors and fireplaces are taken from woodcuts in various editions of Serlio’s Architettura.

A few objects reappear several times. The artichokes in Earth, for instance, recur in the Seller of Exotic Animals (Naples: fig. 48), dated 1566, the Two Men and Two Women selling Poultry (Naples), also dated 1566, the Vegetable and Fruit Market (Antwerp), dated 1567 (see p. 97, fig. 7), the Women selling Fruit and Vegetables (known from a version at Bratislava: fig. 21), the Still Life with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Lemgo: fig. 23), dated 1569, and the Couple selling Vegetables (Budapest), which is not dated. The ray in Water (fig. 30) reappears in the Fish Market with the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Naples: fig. 41), dated 1570, and, slightly varied, in the Antwerp Fish Market of 1574. Several of the hens and ducks in Air reappear in the Two Women and a Man selling Poultry of 1564 (Genoa: see p. 93, fig. 2), which also includes the same coop containing the same cockerel. The perspective of the coop is shifted slightly and similar coops recur in many of Beuckelaer’s paintings. The leg of mutton in the lower left corner of Fire is similar, though not identical, to joints of meat in several of the kitchen scenes. The two woodcock in Fire, however, are found again in the Seller of Exotic Animals (Naples: fig. 48), dated 1566, the Two Men and Two Women selling Poultry (Naples), also dated 1566, the Vegetable and Fruit Market (Antwerp: p. 97, fig. 7), dated 1567, the Couple selling Poultry (Naples: fig. 35) of 1569 and the Still Life with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Lemgo: fig. 23), also dated 1569.

It seems that, for familiar objects and common birds and animals, Beuckelaer could refer to the real thing as well as to his sketches. He would improvise and make variations on the themes recorded in his archive. For less familiar objects, such as the artichokes and the woodcock, he generally followed his preliminary studies more faithfully. There is no suggestion, at least in the Four Elements, that he used tracings or other mechanical methods of transfer. He copied his sketches freehand and at will he enlarged, reduced, reversed, turned or varied his patterns.

Since Beuckelaer has not thought it necessary to bring to the same degree of finish all the heads in the Four Elements, it is possible to observe most of the stages through which he worked. The infrared reflectograms of the two principal heads in Earth (figs 17, 18) show the bold black brushstrokes by which some of the faces were suggested before being repositioned for the finished version of the composition. In Air, the two women on the left of the middle ground have been taken one stage further; while in Water the beautiful head of the lady third from the left (fig. 31) has been more fully worked up, though it remains unfinished. The young woman on the left of Air provides an excellent example of a head that Beuckelaer has completed (fig. 38).

Beuckelaer’s ability as a painter is perhaps most apparent in Water. He has painted very quickly, usually thinly and with remarkable economy, for he did not expend his energies without purpose. With surprising boldness and confidence, he laid in the paint in broad brushstrokes and was not nervous of daringly extreme contrasts of tone. The three gutted and not very fresh herring in the top right corner (fig. 29) would not look out of place in paintings by Manet or Cézanne – though they were less spontaneous artists than the effortless Beuckelaer. In the two pike in the lower left corner, Beuckelaer indicated the patterns of the scales by painting, with easy regularity and accuracy, and doubtless at great speed, grids of dark lines; next he placed tiny pale blue dots at the interstices of the grids which, with the hatched white highlights, gave glistening texture to the skins as well as form to the bodies (figs 27, 28, 54). Sometimes he left exposed small areas of priming and, as we have seen, he did not always bring all parts of a single picture to the same degree of finish. Even in his completely finished heads, there are surprisingly bold and broad brushstrokes and abrupt tonal contrasts.

Notes

Infrared reflectography was carried out using OSIRIS (InGaAs digital sensor). For further details see p. 18, note 23.