Costumbres populares; cocina; cebolla; trocear; sexualidad; Dou; siglo XVII; Royal Collection - History Lab https://historylab.es Thu, 19 May 2022 14:38:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://historylab.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-icono-historylab-32x32.jpg Costumbres populares; cocina; cebolla; trocear; sexualidad; Dou; siglo XVII; Royal Collection - History Lab https://historylab.es 32 32 A woman chopping onions https://historylab.es/a-woman-chopping-onions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-woman-chopping-onions Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:41 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/una-mujer-troceando-cebolla/ Domestic interior in which a woman chops onions, an issue with certain sexual connotations during the 17th century

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]]> The activities of kitchen maids is one of the favourite subjects of Dou who did not exclusively enjoy the brightness of still-life painting, but pursued other types of artistic themes. Cooks were the subject of the comic literature of 17th-century Holland and painters emphasised their charms through the use of symbolism based on contemporary emblem books or proverbs. Thus, the empty birdcage would allude to the loss of virtue and the dead bird would have a double meaning: the Dutch word vogel (bird) is also slang for copulation. Many of the utensils in the image, such as the candle, the mortar and pestle and the jug, have clear sexual connotations. In addition, the maiden looks straight ahead while chopping onions, which in the 17th century were used as an aphrodisiac.

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