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. His development of the genre of market and kitchen scenes was influential on the development of still life art in Northern Europe as well as Italy. Life Details about the life of the artist are scarce. Beuckelaer was born in Antwerp into a family of painters. He was likely the son of the painter Mattheus Beuckeleer and the brother of Huybrecht Beuckeleer. His brother also became a painter and the works of Huybrecht have occasionally been misattributed to Joachim. He possibly learned to paint in the workshop of his uncle, Pieter Aertsen, who had married his aunt Kathelijne Beuckelaer. Aertsen was best known for his market and kitchen scenes, genres. Beuckelaer became an independent master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1560. Beuckelaer remained active in Antwerp throughout his career and continued to develop themes pioneered in painting by Aertsen, but arguably surpassing his presumed master in skill. The date of his death is not known with certainty but fell likely between 1570 and 1574. Work Beuckelaer specialised in market and kitchen scenes with elaborate displays of food and household equipment. During the 1560s, especially during the early part of the decade, Beuckelaer painted some purely religious works, for which, unlike the kitchen and market scenes, drawings are known. In this period he also made designs for stained glass. Beuckelaer's market scenes, like those of Aertsen, often incorporate biblical episodes in the background. His Four Elements series, acquired by the National Gallery, London in 2001, exemplifies this on a large scale. Water, for example, shows a fish market selling twelve kinds of fish, representing the twelve disciples of Jesus. Through an archway in the background Christ can be seen walking on the Sea of Galilee after his resurrection, making fish appear miraculously in empty nets. Both Aertsen and Beuckelaer gradually developed images that detached the world of produce from the religious content of their earlier hybrid images. These later works depict either kitchens or markets and the persons associated with those activities, more often women than men. The later paintings by Beuckelaer show a greater profusion of foodstuffs in the market scenes, together with a more prominent foregrounding of female peasants