Kitchen Scene
Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
1618–20
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- 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.)
- Culture
- Spain
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In this modest kitchen scene, a type known as a bodegón (from the Spanish word for pantry), Diego Velázquez depicted a young African woman at work, surrounded by exquisitely rendered pots, jugs, a mortar and pestle, and a crumpled paper wrapper for spices. In creating this painting, Velázquez may have used an enslaved woman from his or an associate’s household as a model. Slavery was widespread in the young artist’s hometown of Seville, Spain, and Velázquez, his father, and his teacher, Francisco Pacheco, were all enslavers.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
