''Old Woman Frying Eggs'' is a genre painting by Diego Velázquez, produced during his

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

period. The date is not precisely known but is thought to be around the turn of 1618 before his definitive move to

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

in 1623. The painting is in the

Scottish National Gallery 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 W ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

. Velázquez frequently used working-class characters in early paintings like this one, in many cases using his family as models; the old woman here also appears in his ''

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary (also referred to as Christ in the House of Martha and by other variant names) refers to a Biblical episode in the life of Jesus in the New Testament which appears only in Luke's Gospel (), immediately after th ...

'' (1618). There is some dispute about what cooking process is actually depicted with some suggesting not frying but

poaching Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set a ...

, leading to an alternative title of the painting, ''Old Woman Cooking Eggs'' or ''Old Woman Poaching Eggs''. ''Old Woman Frying Eggs'' is considered to be one of the strongest of Velázquez's early works. Like others, it shows the influence of

chiaroscuro Chiaroscuro ( , ; ), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achi ...

, with a strong light source coming in from the left illuminating the woman, her utensils and the poaching eggs, while throwing the background and the boy standing to her right into deep shadow. Here the chiaroscuro is very intense, so much so that it would be impossible to see the wall at the bottom of the painting but for the basket hanging from it; it simultaneously manages to combine the murky darkness and high contrasts of light and shadow with the use of subtle hues and a palette dominated by ochres and browns. The composition is organised as an oval with the middle figures in the nearest plane, thus drawing in the viewer. The realism is nearly photographic and shows everyday plates, cutlery, pans, pestles, jugs and mortars, capturing the special shine on a glass surface and the light's play on the melon carried by the boy. The boiling pan is particularly well-captured, with its reflections and the whites of the eggs. Velázquez also worked particularly hard on the detail of the two figures' hands.

References

External links

''Velázquez ''
exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on ''Old Woman Frying Eggs'' (see index) {{ACArt, country=ES 1618 paintings Seville-period paintings by Diego Velázquez Paintings in the National Galleries of Scotland Paintings by Diego Velázquez Food and drink paintings Genre paintings