In the painting from Frans Snyders’ studio, a poulterer stands amidst dead poultry such as a swan and a pheasant. There is also a deer. It is a beautiful but gruesome scene.
The painting hung in a dining room, but the university has now removed it, writes the British newspaper The Telegraph. Some students lost their appetite when they saw it.
The painting will be part of an exhibition in the university museum about food between 1500 and 1800. According to the curators, the fact that the painting has now been removed is illustrative of the theme: the moral and political choices surrounding food. The debate on vegetarianism, for example, was also held in the sixteenth century.
This seventeenth-century painting is a copy by an unknown painter. The original hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
HOP, Bas Belleman
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