Kitchen Scene

Kitchen Scene by Diego Velázquez: In this modest kitchen scene, a type known as a bodegón (from the Spanish word for pantry), Diego Velázquez depicted a young…

What to notice

Move from the foreground vessels and food toward the working figures, noticing how ordinary kitchen labor is arranged through strong light, shadow, and overlapping planes.

Discover

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…