''Slaughtered Ox'', also known as ''Flayed Ox'', ''Side of Beef'', or ''Carcass of Beef'', is a 1655 oil on

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engle ...

panel

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

painting by

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

. It has been in the collection of the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

in Paris since 1857. A similar painting is in

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. It reopened in 2006 after a three-year refurbishment and since then has been one of Scotland's most popular visitor attractions. The museum has 22 galleries, h ...

, Glasgow, possibly by Rembrandt himself but probably by one of his pupils, perhaps Fabritius.The Carcase of an Ox
ArtUK Other similar paintings by Rembrandt or more likely his circle are held by museums in Budapest and Philadelphia. The work follows in a tradition of artworks showing butchery, for example Pieter Aertsen's '' A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms'' (1551) and

Annibale Carracci Annibale Carracci (; November 3, 1560 – July 15, 1609) was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of th ...

's '' Butcher's Shop'' (c. 1583), and perhaps more specifically Joachim Beuckelaer's '' Slaughtered Pig'' (1563). Rembrandt made a drawing of a similar scene c. 1635. Another pre-1655 painting of a slaughtered ox (the example in Edinburgh, now attributed to Rembrandt's circle but formerly to Rembrandt) was perhaps inspired by a lost earlier work by Rembrandt himself. In northern Europe, November was traditionally the time for slaughtering livestock, before winter made feed difficult to find. The painting measures , and is signed and dated "Rembrandt f. 1655". It shows the butchered carcass of a bull or an ox, hanging in a wooden building, possibly a stable or lean-to shed. The carcass is suspended by its two rear legs, which are tied by ropes to a wooden crossbeam. The animal has been decapitated and flayed of skin and hair, the chest cavity has been stretched open and the internal organs removed, revealing a mass of flesh, fat, connective tissue, joints, bones, and ribs. The carcass is carefully coloured, and given texture by impasto. In the background, a woman appears behind a half-open door, lifting the painting from

into a

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached ...

, a scene of everyday life. It is sometimes considered a vanitas or

memento mori ''Memento mori'' (Latin for 'remember that you ave todie'

in 1857 for 5,000 francs. The work's muscular depiction inspired

Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...

Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...

, a series of works by

Chaïm Soutine Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris. Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the ...

, and

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

. Most particularly, Bacon's ''

Figure with Meat ''Figure with Meat'' is a 1954 painting by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The figure is based on the Pope Innocent X portrait by Diego Velázquez; however, in the Bacon painting the Pope is shown as a gruesome figure and placed between two ...

'' depicts Pope Innocent X, as painted by Velazquez, accompanied by ghostly echoes of the carcass from Rembrandt's painting.

Gallery

File:El cadáver de un buey, atribuido a Rembrandt.jpg, Similar painting in Glasgow, c. 1640, likely by a follower of Rembrandt File:Slaughtered ox Rembrandt.jpg, Similar painting in Budapest, 1639, likely by a follower of Rembrandt File:Rembrandt - Slaughtered Ox - Cat475.jpg, Similar painting in Philadelphia, 1640s, likely by a follower of Rembrandt File:Chaim Soutine - Carcass of Beef - 57.12 - Minneapolis Institute of Arts.jpg, Soutine, ''Carcass of Beef'', 1925

References

*
''Le Boeuf écorché''
Louvre
''The slaughtered ox''
Rembrandt database
''A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings V: The Small-Scale History Paintings''
2011., edited by Ernst van de Wetering, p.551-562

Don Gray

Lisa Deam, ''The Cresset'', Trinity 2007 (Vol LXX, No. 5, p 6-13)
Avigdor W.G. Posèq: A Proposal for Rembrandt's Two Versions of Slaughtered Ox, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 30, No. 60 (2009), pp. 271-276, Cracow, 2009.
* Smith, Baige Elise: ''Rembrandt`s Anatomy Lessons'', diss., The University of Western Australia, 2010.
Niels Bergervoet Rembrandt and the ''Slaughtered Ox'', 2011.
* Margaret D. Carroll: The Blade and the Brush: Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox and Anatomy of Doctor Deyman, Oxford Art Journal 40(3), 2017., str.347-369
Alison M. Kettering: After Life: Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox, Artibus et Historiae, 79 (XL), 2019., 267-286

External sources

Rembrandt's Flayed Ox Explained
{{ACArt Paintings by Rembrandt 1665 paintings Paintings in the Louvre by Dutch, Flemish and German artists Still life paintings Animal paintings Animal killing Cattle in art Paintings about death