Artwork · 16th century · Joachim Beuckelaer

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Fish Market

Joachim Beuckelaer1568Oil on Baltic oak128.6 × 174.9 cm

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At a glance

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A bearded fishmonger with a big cleaver chops salmon at a stall that fills the whole picture.
The Antwerp painter Joachim Beuckelaer painted it in 1568 in oil on a panel of Baltic oak.
Up front, the fish are laid out large and lifelike; through an arch at the back, a small city street opens up.

Reading the picture

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Zoom in on the fishmonger's right hand. Thick fingers grip the handle of a broad cleaver. Below the blade lie round salmon steaks, orange flesh swirled with white bands. Next to them, a fish head with its eye wide open stares right back at you.
Look at the big fish lying head-down in the middle of the table. Its head hangs at the table's edge, mouth open. The folds of the gills and the wet shine of the skin are painted one by one. It is so lifelike you can almost smell it.
Peer into the brass basin on the right. It is full of water, and a fish lies under the surface. Its scales make a tight net pattern, and small drops and glints of light sit on the water. Unlike the fish on the table, this one is still in water.
Look through the arch at the top. Two men carry a big basket slung from a pole across their shoulders. Behind them stand a tower with a pointed roof and buildings like a town wall. The noise of the stall up front runs straight into ordinary street life outside.
Zoom in on the tabletop at lower left. A letter B and the number 1568 are painted on the wood grain. These are Beuckelaer's initial and the year, made to look as if they were cut into the board.

When it was painted

In 1568 Joachim Beuckelaer was about thirty-five. He was born and raised in Antwerp, a great trading city full of ships and merchants from all over Europe, and in 1560 he became a master in the city's painters' guild of Saint Luke. He had learned his trade from Pieter Aertsen, his uncle by marriage. Aertsen made his name with market and kitchen scenes, meat, vegetables, and fish piled high in the foreground.

Those pictures usually held a small surprise. Far behind the food, in a little space at the back, there was often a Bible story, such as Christ visiting the house of Martha and Mary. Beuckelaer's own earlier market and kitchen scenes did the same. But look through the arch in this Fish Market. There is no Bible scene at all.

The world outside was shaking. In 1566 crowds across the Netherlands smashed religious images in churches. The next year the Duke of Alba arrived with an army sent by the king of Spain. The Met's curator has pointed out that Beuckelaer stopped making market scenes with religious episodes right around 1566, and argues that the timing is unlikely to be a coincidence.

Beuckelaer died in 1574, six years after he painted this panel. The picture then dropped out of view. For about seventy years it sat in a private collection in Belgium, and scholars knew it only through two copies painted on canvas. When the Metropolitan Museum bought it in 2015, the original came back into the light.

So look through the arch once more. Where a Bible story might once have gone, Beuckelaer painted two men hauling a basket on a pole and an ordinary day in the street.

The painter

Joachim Beuckelaer

1533–1574

When painting this, the artist was about 35 years old

All paintings by Joachim Beuckelaer →

Fish Market

Questions to think about

Look for itCan you find the woman holding a basket behind the fishmonger?
Why?Why do you think Beuckelaer made the fish bigger and more detailed than the people?
What about you?More than 450 years ago, fish were cleaned and cut right in front of the buyer. Now most of us only see fish wrapped in plastic. Why might it matter to know where our food comes from and how it gets to us?

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