Key facts
Full title | The Four Elements: Fire |
---|---|
Artist | Joachim Beuckelaer |
Artist dates | probably about 1535; died 1575 |
Series | The Four Elements |
Date made | 1570 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 158.2 × 215.4 cm |
Inscription summary | Signed; Dated |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 2001 |
Inventory number | NG6588 |
Location | Room 15 |
Art route(s) | B |
Collection | Main Collection |
The Four Elements: Fire
Joachim Beuckelaer
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This large and well-stocked kitchen is a hive of industry. Four female servants prepare and cook food while a young man perches on a stool before the fire, swigging from an earthenware jug. Pots and pans litter the brick floor and every available surface seems stacked with produce.
This is one of four large paintings in which food is used to symbolise the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, with biblical scenes in the background. Here, in the back room, is Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. When Martha complained of her sister’s laziness in leaving her to do all the work, Christ replied that Mary had chosen better by sitting at his feet and listening to him.
Beuckelaer often put his signature in half-hidden places; here, it is on the edge of the sideboard. The date, 1570, is on the lintel above the doorway.
This large and well-stocked kitchen is a hive of industry. Four female servants prepare and cook food while a young man perches on a stool before the fire, swigging from an earthenware jug. Pots and pans litter the brick floor and every available surface seems stacked with produce.
This is clearly a wealthy household – the kitchen fills the whole floor of a country house. Sun pours in through the open shutters of the window on the left, falling on a jug and a basket of rolls and cheeses on a narrow table. On the right, a door opens to outside stairs and trees behind. There’s a grand stone fireplace, pewter plates and flagons, plus a range of earthenware, pewter vessels and green glasses on the sideboard. A second spacious room, decorated in a fashionable antique style, is visible through the doorway beside the fire.
There’s also an abundance of produce: a ham hangs from a beam and a haunch of mutton, a turkey and an exotically coloured hen from the wooden dresser; mussels shells are scattered on the floor; partridges, drakes and woodcocks lie on the table. Another haunch of mutton lies on a green-glazed earthenware dish in the foreground. The two women at the front pluck and prepare fowls to be roasted on the spit one holds in her hand. The others tend the fire and the pot hanging over it.
This is one of four large paintings in which food symbolises the four elements – earth, air, fire and water. This one shows fire. Cooking a meal on a hot summer’s day has always been a warm job, and this picture seems to radiate heat: the doors and windows are flung open to let air in, the woman by the fire holds up her hand to shield her face from the blaze and the cheeks of the two women in the foreground glow. One turns to look out at us over her shoulder, as if we too are part of this busy scene.
In a back room, Christ, dressed in a blue robe and with a halo of whitish light around his head, speaks to Martha and Mary. Seated on his left is Mary, who ’sat at Jesus‘ feet and heard his word’. The standing woman gesturing indignantly is Martha, who complained of her sister’s idleness: ‘Lord, doest Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me’. But Christ answered, ‘Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10: 38–42). The artist included religious scenes in the background of many of his paintings, often connected to the subject of the picture.
Beuckelaer often reused themes and details, and painted a number of kitchen scenes with Martha and Mary in the background: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (there are versions in: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, from 1565; Stockholm, 1565; Amsterdam, 1566; Lemgo, 1569; Vienna, 1574). The model for the girl looking out at us may also have been used in The Four Elements: Earth and The Four Elements: Water. He often put his signature in half-hidden places: here it’s on the edge of the sideboard. The date, 1570, is on the lintel above the doorway.
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The Four Elements: Fire
Joachim Beuckelaer
i
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The Four Elements
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Packed with fish, fruit, vegetables, birds and animals, these four big pictures are like giant stage sets, teeming with life. Although superficially market and kitchen scenes, the different types of food represent the four elements: vegetables for earth, fish for water, poultry for air and game for fire. In the backgrounds are biblical scenes.
Beuckelaer has created an impression of great abundance and variety, although the foods shown were readily available to ordinary Netherlanders for most of the sixteenth century. However, these pictures were painted at a time of political and religious repression and severe economic recession. They perhaps show a remembered golden age, when food was plentiful.
The group may well have been commissioned in Antwerp by a foreigner, probably the vastly wealthy and cultured Fernão Ximenes, Consul for the Portuguese Nation. By 1884 the paintings were in Florence, in the Palazzo Panciatichi-Ximenes d'Aragona.
Packed with fish, fruit, vegetables, birds and animals, these four big pictures are like giant stage sets, teeming with life. The boundaries between painting and reality seem to have dissolved – people look directly out at us, offering us a plethora of produce which seems in danger of tumbling out into the real world. Although superficially market and kitchen scenes, the different types of food represent the four elements: vegetables for earth, fish for water, poultry for air and game for fire. In the backgrounds are biblical scenes.
Although Joachim Beuckelaer has created an impression of great abundance and variety, the foods shown were readily available to ordinary Netherlanders for most of the sixteenth century. However, these pictures were painted at a time of cruel political and religious repression and severe economic recession. Terrible weather, poor harvests, wars and high taxes combined to make life almost unendurable. They perhaps show a remembered golden age, when food was plentiful. Fascinatingly, he makes no reference to payment in any of the pictures.
All four compositions are constructed in the same way, with two people at the front surrounded by still lifes heaped on baskets, barrows, tables, stools and shelves. In the background are other groups – customers, cooks and passers-by – and right at the back are religious scenes. The level and accuracy of detail makes us feel that the images are completely credible, although the compositions are contrived and there’s no logic to the space: landscapes are not continuous, perspectives run in different directions and the interior in The Four Elements: Fire is oddly distorted. The colours fade as they recede, helping clarify the complicated spatial arrangements.
Beuckelaer specialised in elaborate displays of food, and these paintings are the culmination of themes he explored in other pictures. The same details recur in many of his paintings, although he rarely repeated the same setting or figure exactly, instead enlarging, reducing and reversing them as he wished. He clearly kept an archive of sketches, but technical investigations have shown that the underdrawing was done freehand, not copied mechanically. He also worked constantly from life: he had several models whom he used frequently and kept a wardrobe of clothes in which to dress them. It seems that for common objects, birds and animals, Beuckelaer referred to the real thing as well as sketches, improvising and making variations on themes in his archives. For more unusual objects – such as the artichokes in The Four Elements: Earth – he followed his preliminary studies more faithfully.
The pictures are painted on canvas and are variously dated 1569 or 1570. Beuckelaer normally painted on panel but would have used canvas for large pictures that were to be exported. This group may well have been commissioned in Antwerp by a foreigner, probably Fernão Ximenes, one of the deputies of the Portugese Consul and an art collector and bibliophile. Fernão must have been well aware that easily portable paintings on canvas were preferable to large, heavy panels: he‘d had to leave Antwerp in a hurry during the iconoclast riots in 1564. By 1884 the paintings were in Florence, in the Palazzo Panciatichi-Ximenes d’Aragona.
The appearance of all four pictures has been seriously affected by the deterioration of an unstable blue pigment called smalt, which Beuckelaer used for skies and garments. The skies are now greyish-cream not blue, and clothes were originally a variety of purples and blues.

An avalanche of outsize vegetables tumbles towards us on the left of this painting. On the right, glistening fruits are piled in baskets and bowls balanced rather precariously on a wheelbarrow.The two women at the front, often called stallholders, appear to be buying rather than selling. Their ro...

A plethora of piscine produce is presented to us: fish of all kinds are piled in baskets, tumble over the edges of platters or slip from the stallholder’s grasp – there are even mussel shells scattered on the floor. The two vendors ignore their prospective clients and look directly at us, as if a...

At first sight this looks like a busy sixteenth-century street scene. A man sells poultry and other produce, piled up in baskets and barrels, in the corner of a market square. He lifts up two hens by their legs, feathers from their flapping wings drifting down and settling on the coop below. On t...
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Joachim Beuckelaer's 'Fire' in 10 minutes
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Clara, one of the National Gallery’s Young Producers, presents a 10-minute talk about Joachim Beuckelaer’s ‘The Four Elements: Fire’.
More paintings by Joachim Beuckelaer

At first sight this looks like a busy sixteenth-century street scene. A man sells poultry and other produce, piled up in baskets and barrels, in the corner of a market square. He lifts up two hens by their legs, feathers from their flapping wings drifting down and settling on the coop below. On t...

An avalanche of outsize vegetables tumbles towards us on the left of this painting. On the right, glistening fruits are piled in baskets and bowls balanced rather precariously on a wheelbarrow.The two women at the front, often called stallholders, appear to be buying rather than selling. Their ro...

A plethora of piscine produce is presented to us: fish of all kinds are piled in baskets, tumble over the edges of platters or slip from the stallholder’s grasp – there are even mussel shells scattered on the floor. The two vendors ignore their prospective clients and look directly at us, as if a...