Everything the Body Knows

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens worked on these pictures together, Brueghel painting the objects and the settings, Rubens the figures. This slow art encounter runs the full cycle of the five senses, then the two large Sight and Smell canvases that treat two of them at once. Each is packed to its edges with flowers, armour, instruments, glassware, animals and food. Looked at slowly, the abundance stops being a list and becomes a world. These works can be seen at The Museo Nacional del Prado.