In the second half of the 16th century, Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer painted in Antwerp works showing in the foreground cooks or market-sellers amidst a bountiful spread of vegetables, fruit and/or meat, with small religious scenes in spaces in the background. These were part of a pattern of ' Mannerist inversion' in Antwerp painting, giving 'low' elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis.

In the previous century, the Flemish Renaissance painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen painted innovative large-scale genre scenes, sometimes including a moral theme or a religious scene in the background in the first half of the 16th century. The Low Countries dominated the field until the 18th century, and in the 17th century both Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting produced numerous specialists who mostly painted genre scenes. Peasant Dance by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, c. Medieval illuminated manuscripts often illustrated scenes of everyday peasant life, especially in the Labours of the Months in the calendar section of books of hours, most famously the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Painted decorations in ancient Egyptian tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and Peiraikos is mentioned by Pliny the Elder as a Hellenistic panel painter of 'low' subjects, such as survive in mosaic versions and provincial wall-paintings at Pompeii: 'barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, asses, eatables and similar subjects'. Genre subjects appear in many traditions of art. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist.

In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait-sometimes a subjective question. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person-a member of his family, say-as a model. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings (also called grand genre) and portraits. Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid by Jan Vermeer 1670/71)

Scenes of subjugation