Pieter Aersten was a Netherlandish painter, active in his native Amsterdam and in Antwerp. 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. A pioneer of still life and genre painting, he is best known for scenes that at first glance look like pure examples of these types, but which in fact have a religious scene incorporated in them (Butcher's Stall with the Flight into Egypt, University of Uppsala, 1551). His depictions of food, flowers, and everyday objects make him important in the development of still-life painting. Aertsen was the head of a long dynasty of painters, of whom the most talented was his nephew and pupil Joachim Bueckelaer. 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.
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