Netherlandish painter Pieter Aertsen had, as a youth, apprenticed with Allaert Claesz.

A pioneer of still life and genre painting, he has distinguished himself by painting domestic scenes in which he reproduces articles of furniture, cooking utensils, and so on, with marvelous fidelity.

His Butcher’s Stall with the Flight into Egypt, painted in about 1551, leads northern painting of still-lifes to more conventional table arrangements of foodstuffs and meals.

Aertsen's scenes at first glance look like pure examples of still life and genre painting types, but in fact have a religious scene incorporated in them.