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Your galleryKitchen Scene
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Compare the dull shine of the metal bowl, the glaze of the white jug and the crisp folds of the paper, then return to the woman’s lowered face.
This bodegón, a Spanish kitchen picture named after the word for pantry, was painted by the young Velázquez in Seville. A young African woman leans over her work among a metal bowl, glazed jugs, a mortar and pestle and a twist of paper for spices. The Art Institute notes that slavery was widespread in Seville, that Velázquez, his father and his teacher all held enslaved people, and that the woman he painted may have been enslaved in one of their households.
Oil on canvas · 55.9 × 104.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Kitchen Scene
- Artist
- Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
- Date
- 1618–20
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 55.9 × 104.2 cm (21 7/8 × 41 1/8 in.); Framed: 74.9 × 125.1 × 7.3 cm (29 1/2 × 49 1/4 × 2 7/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.