Description
The Fat Kitchen packs an interior with eating figures, food and cookware. Tables and hanging sausages occupy a room whose crowded inhabitants seem consumed by appetite. Pieter van der Heyden engraved the design after Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1563, and Hieronymus Cock published it. The scene makes abundance a subject for scrutiny, turning the kitchen into a stage on which bodily comfort and excess become difficult to separate.
The visual density is part of the satire. Heads, hands, utensils and provisions press against one another, leaving little room for the eye to settle. Fine engraved lines make individual actions legible within this busy whole, so the viewer can compare each eater with the atmosphere surrounding the group. What might initially seem reassuring plenty becomes disproportionate. The room’s overflowing contents give appetite an almost physical power over its occupants.
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