In the museum catalogue
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Kitchen Scene
Diego Velázquez1618/20
- Attribution
- Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Physical 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
CATALOGUE RECORD
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
In this modest kitchen scene, a type known as a bodegón (from the Spanish 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. Slavery was widespread in the young artist’s hometown of Seville: Velázquez, his father, and his teacher, Francisco Pacheco, were all enslavers. In creating this painting, Velázquez may have used an enslaved woman from one of these households as a model.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0