Pieter Aertsen, c 1507/08 – June 2, 1575, was a Dutch painter born in Amsterdam. He worked in Antwerp from about 1535, becoming a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, and returned to Amsterdam around 1556.

Aertsen painted altarpieces as well as large kitchen, market, and peasant scenes. His compositions often place abundant displays of food and household goods in the foreground while relegating a biblical episode to the background. His nephew and pupil Joachim Beuckelaer developed related subjects.

Many of Aertsen’s religious works were destroyed during the iconoclasm of the sixteenth century. His surviving paintings are held by institutions including the Rijksmuseum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

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