The cook maid and market scenes, popular in the seventeenth century evolved in the low countries from a genre practiced by Pieter Aertsen ( c.1533 – c.1573) and his colleague Joachim Beucklaear, which combined contemporary kitchen scenes with a new testament episode beyond. Bacon could have been inspired by the work he had seen on his visit he made to the low countries in 1613.

Religiously, this image would have suited the era in which it was painted. Symbolically, the idea that their is a house wife in the kitchen would have suited the traditional values that would have had to be upheld during this time. A woman would always be the one that sat at home and cooks for her family .