| In his picture "Christ in the House of Mary and Martha", Pieter de Bloot combined the religious scene with a kitchen still life in the foreground. Going back to mid-sixteenth-century compositions by Pieter Aertsen (1507/08–1575), this type was already obsolete when the picture was painted in 1637. While the religious scene is supplanted, it does not mean that interest in faith and its message was declining. On the contrary: this arrangement symbolizes the dualism of human life. Human beings usually take more interest in their physical well-being, represented by the still life of magnificent fruit, vegetables etc., than their spiritual salvation and their belief in God. The challenge, therefore, is to overcome the temptations offered by everyday pleasures so that the soul can be saved through devotion to the true values of life. Here, Mary and Martha, with their different characters, represent the two possible ways of serving God: book in hand, Mary denotes the "vita contemplativa", a life of study and meditation. With her apron and rolled-up sleeves, Martha signifies the "vita activa", the way of good deeds. The sensual aspect of the lavish arrangement of delicacies on the kitchen table is an allusion to sexuality: the cat eating the fish, birds, eggs and onions were all considered to be erotic symbols. |
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Oil on panel
height 47 cm, width 66 cm
Signed and dated bottom right in a piece of paper in the stone niche: P. de Bloot /1637
Inv.-No. GE663
Provenance: 1787 acquired by Prince Alois I von Liechtenstein with the collection of his librarian, Abbé Valentin Lucchini, in Vienna
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