Lodging Interior

The work represents a crowded composition of figures distributed on parallel planes, some alternating in the culinary tasks, others brightly gathered at the tables, others playing, according to a typically Brueghelian scenographic scheme. Signed and dated on the back (1565), this is the only painting by Marten van Cleve documented in Italian public collections and is one of the most significant testimonies of the success of Flemish genre painting in northern Italy. Marten van Cleve, one of the first specialists in genre scenes, led a large workshop in Antwerp, capable of satisfying the demands of a vast market by working on a limited number of themes to be reproduced in quantity, with only minimal variations. His painting, autonomous and original in synthesizing the multiple languages ​​of the Antwerp figurative culture of the time, had its own circle of admirers for which the satirical images linked to the life of the lower classes constituted a motive for amusement and entertainment.