''Woman Cooking'' or ''The Cook'' (Italian - ''La cuoca'') is the modern title given to a circa 1625 oil on canvas genre painting by

Bernardo Strozzi Bernardo Strozzi, named il Cappuccino and il Prete Genovese (c. 1581 – 2 August 1644) was an Italian Baroque painter and engraver. A canvas and fresco artist, his wide subject range included history, allegorical, genre and portrait paintin ...

, produced in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

and still held in the

Palazzo Rosso The Palazzo Brignole Sale or Palazzo Rosso is a house museum located in Via Garibaldi, in the historical center of Genoa, in Northwestern Italy. The palace is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Pa ...

in the city, part of the Strada Nuova Museums. A second autograph version with various differences was in the painter's studio at his death and is now at the

National Gallery of Scotland The Scottish National Gallery (formerly the National Gallery of Scotland) is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by Wi ...

in Edinburgh. The Genoa version first appears in the written record in a 1683 inventory of the goods of Gio. Francesco I Brignole-Sale del 1683, with the title "Animals and figure of a standing woman cooking by Prete Cappuccino". At the end of the 18th century it was recorded as hanging in the Palazzo Rosso - that palace and all the artworks it contained were donated to the city of Genoa by Duchessa di Galliera Maria Brignole-Sale De Ferrari in 1874. Despite the modern title the woman is in fact a general servant or maid rather than a cook - the precious silver plate shows the work to be set in a patrician palace kitchen, where at that date the cooks were always male. The subject derives from the Flemish kitchen-set works of

Pieter Aertsen Pieter Aertsen (1508 – 2 June 1575), called ''Lange Piet'' ("Tall Pete") because of his height, was a Dutch painter in the style of Northern Mannerism. He is credited with the invention of the monumental genre scene, which combines still life ...

and

Joachim Beuckelaer Joachim Beuckelaer (c. 1533 – c. 1570/4) was a Flemish painter specialising in market and kitchen scenes with elaborate displays of food and household equipment. He also painted still lifes with no figures in the central scene.

, already known in Genoa at that time. Its genre subject would have placed it low in the art hierarchy of De Ferrari's time, but it is now considered one of Strozzi's best works, with much in common with contemporary Italian Baroque art

Ezia Gavazza Ezia Gavazza (1928-18 April 2019) was an Italian art historian. Along with her friends and colleagues Lauro Magnani and Piero Boccardo, she was one of the most prolific writers in Genoa on Baroque art. She specialised in the Ligurian Baroque, parti ...

and other authors, ''Bernardo Strozzi, Genova 1581/82-Venezia 1644'', catalogue of an exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale di Genova, Electa,

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

o 1995, p. 186 Some interpret it as an allegory of the five senses or the four elements, though this is not the majority view.{{in lang, it P. Boccardo, Palazzo Rosso, Milano, 1992

References

Genre paintings Paintings in the Musei di Strada Nuova 1625 paintings Paintings in National Galleries Scotland Paintings by Bernardo Strozzi Birds in art