The Butcher's Shop, a painting by Carracci, is categorized as a genre painting that offers a glimpse into the everyday life of Italians during the late 1500s. The artwork showcases butchers preparing meat for sale, with the central figure in the foreground preparing a lamb for slaughter. Meanwhile, his assistants are hooking up carcasses for display. In a humorous touch, a customer wearing an oversized feather hat in the left corner is shown fumbling for money to pay for his purchase. Carracci's uncle was a butcher, and some historians have suggested that family members may have been represented in the painting.
During the late-sixteenth century in Bologna, artisans and shopkeepers occupied the lower rungs of society and were vulnerable to economic instability and a weakened guild system. Carracci's painting reflects his commitment to "painting from real life," with broken brushwork adding authenticity to the humble butchers depicted as masters of their trade. The inclusion of the humorous caricature of the paying customer adds a light-hearted touch to the artwork.
Butcher's Shop is the title of two paintings by the Italian Baroque painter Annibale Carracci, both dating from the early 1580s. They are now in the collections of Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The paintings are connected to the contemporary Beaneater (Galleria Colonna), as they are very early examples of Italian genre painting. The large size of the Christ Church painting is exceptional for such a subject at this date, and it has been suggested they were commissioned by a butcher's guild, or for use as a sign. Carracci was influenced in his depiction of everyday life subjects by Vincenzo Campi and Bartolomeo Passarotti, whom the Butcher's Shop was originally attributed to. Carracci's ability to adapt his style is demonstrated, making it "lower" when concerning "lower", quasi-satirical subjects like the Mangiafagioli and the Butcher's Shop, while in his more academic works (such as the roughly contemporary Assumption of the Virgin) he was able to use a more finished manner with the same ease.
It is claimed that members of the painter's family were used as models. Significant alterations to some figures are revealed by X-rays, and the hand on the edge of the table, now apparently belonging to the old woman, though not in proportion with the rest of her, may have originally belonged to the butcher to the right of her.
The Christ Church painting was in the collections of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua and Charles I of England; after reaching Christ church it was for long hung in the college kitchen, before being recognised for what it was in the 20th century.
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