他与学徒Allaert Claesz。通过绘制宗教作品开始后，在1550年代，他研制的国产场景中，他转载家具用品，炊具和食品的绘画天赋大和现实。他的肉铺，与飞行到埃及（乌普萨拉，1551）“被称为北方画静物的矫饰反转的最早的例子”，显示出事情远远更加突出比从主题“低”主题的历史画。在类似的反转山水画已经开发出约阿希姆Patinir安特卫普几十年前，当他发明了世界景观。与这些在Aertsen的作品体裁材料占主导地位的形象正面，在历史的场景，一般的宗教，便于在后台忽视。这种图案画技术的另一个安特卫普艺术家的画一月桑德斯面包车Hemessen，其宗教和道德的场景类型的治疗已经嵌入到以类似的方式在后台小场景。
在乌普萨拉绘画通过教会的窗口后面卖肉的摊位展示的区域，圣家分布在他们的旅途，在中地面的工人施舍，用欢快的公司吃贻贝和牡蛎（认为促进了在里屋的欲望）的后面。在右上角的标志做广告落后于出售土地。这幅画提供观众一系列的生活选择，在一个寓言对身体和精神食粮。这幅画承载的安特卫普纹章，暗示这是一个公民的委托，或许是丰富的屠夫的公会。这样的受试者前约1560手绘大部分。
在文艺复兴时期，画家的经典例子Peiraikos，只能从已知老普林尼，在绘画体裁证明和其他“低”的主题非常重要。Aertsen是由荷兰相比，Peiraikos 文艺复兴时期的人文主义Hadrianus朱尼厄斯（德迪恩Jonghe，1511年至1575年）在他的巴达维亚，在1588年去世后出版，这在全美称的方式在普林尼描述每个点比较Aertsen。由卓然郭某的一篇文章认为，一幅画由他的儿子彼得Pietersz长老（1540年至1603年），通常称为市场场景与西游记马忤斯，其特点突出一个半裸身材谁显然是一个厨师（带耶稣和他的同伴是他身后的小数字），实际上代表了自画像在部分喜剧精神，描绘成Peiraikos。
后来在生活中，他也画宗教题材的更传统的治疗方法，现在大多失去了作为在反传统的的beeldenstorm已被委托天主教教堂被摧毁几个画。他的几个最好的作品，包括祭坛在阿姆斯特丹各教会，在围绕着被称为事件的天也被摧毁Alteratie，或“切换”，当阿姆斯特丹的开始正式收归基督教从天主教于1578年5月26日八十年战争。一位幸存的宗教工作是受难的美术安特卫普皇家博物馆。
Aertsen是安特卫普相当于中的一员Accademia di圣·卢卡。在学院的正式书，他被称为“彼得·朗格，脑白质”（高大彼得，画家）。他的儿子彼得，AERT和德克成为了著名的画家，在他的讲习班培训其他著名的学生包括Stradanus和Aertsen的侄子，约阿希姆Beuckelaer，谁继续发展Aertsen的公式。
Aersten年代在前台静物和流派数字，其中以小场景精确公式历史画在后台只持续了下一代（或两个，因为约阿希姆Wtewael涂一些类似的作品），但历史的画作十分突出和丰富的仍在前台生活元素被制作鲁本斯和他这一代，并在17世纪都佛兰芒巴洛克绘画和荷兰黄金时代绘画发展的独立的静物主题，这只是偶尔在Aertsen的日子产生了重要流派。
不同于老彼得·勃鲁盖尔，Aertsen的流派人物大多描绘（尤其是女性）具有相当的尊严和喜剧没有力气，用姿势，最终从古典艺术衍生理想化，在某些情况下，似乎已经从当代法院写照借的艺术家，如安东尼斯·莫尔。女厨师的两个不同寻常的个人风格肖像画（可能不是实际的个人）热那亚和布鲁塞尔，一个全长，另一个是由设计了三季度的长度格式提香为皇室画像，让他们拿着烤家禽，而好像吐他们是马歇尔的警棍

He was apprenticed with Allaert Claesz. After beginning by painting religious works, in the 1550s he developed the painting of domestic scenes in which he reproduced articles of furniture, cooking utensils, and food with great flair and realism. HisButcher's Shop, with the Flight into Egypt (Uppsala, 1551) "has been called the earliest example of Mannerist inversion of still life in Northern painting", showing the "lower" subject matter far more prominently than the subject from history painting.[2] A similar inversion in landscape painting had been developed by Joachim Patinir in Antwerp several decades earlier when he invented the world landscape. Unlike these, in Aertsen's works the genre material dominates the front of the image, with the history scene, normally religious, easy to overlook in the background. This pictorial technique drew on the paintings of another Antwerp artist, Jan Sanders van Hemessen, whose genre treatments of religious and moral scenes had smaller scenes inset into the background in a similar way.
In the Uppsala painting the zones behind the butcher's stall show (from left) a view through a window of a church, the Holy Family distributing alms on their journey, a worker in the mid-ground, with a merry company eating mussels and oysters (believed to promote lust) in a back room behind. The sign at top right advertises the land behind as for sale. The painting offers the viewer a range of options for life, in an allegory on physical and spiritual food. The painting carries the coat of arms of Antwerp, suggesting it was a civic commission, perhaps by the rich Butcher'sGuild.[4] Such subjects were mostly painted before about 1560.
In the Renaissance, the classical example of the painter Peiraikos, known only from Pliny the Elder, was important in justifying genre and other "low" subjects in painting. Aertsen was compared to Peiraikos by the Dutch Renaissance humanist Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe, 1511–1575) in his Batavia, published posthumously in 1588, which compares Aertsen at each point of Pliny's description in a wholly laudatory manner.An article by Zoran Kwak argues that a painting by his son Pieter Pietersz the Elder (1540–1603), normally called Market Scene with the Journey to Emmaus, which features prominently a half-naked figure who is clearly a cook (with Jesus and his companions as smaller figures behind him), in fact represents a self-portrait in a partly comic spirit, depicted as Peiraikos
Later in life, he also painted more conventional treatments of religious subjects, now mostly lost as during the iconoclasm of thebeeldenstorm several paintings that had been commissioned for Catholic churches were destroyed. Several of his best works, includingaltarpieces in various churches in Amsterdam, were also destroyed during the days surrounding the event known as the Alteratie, or "Changeover", when Amsterdam formally reverted to Protestantism from Catholicism on 26 May 1578 at the start of the Eighty Years' War. One surviving religious work is the Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.
Aertsen was a member of Antwerp's equivalent of the Accademia di San Luca. In the official books of the Academy he is known as "Langhe Peter, schilder" (Tall Peter, painter). His sons Pieter, Aert, and Dirk became acclaimed painters, and other notable pupils trained in his workshop included Stradanus and Aertsen's nephew, Joachim Beuckelaer, who continued to develop Aertsen's formula.
Aersten's exact formula of still life and genre figures in the foreground, with small scenes from history painting in the background only persisted for the next generation (or two, as Joachim Wtewael painted some similar works), but history paintings with very prominent and profuse still life elements in the foreground were produced by Rubens and his generation, and in the 17th century bothFlemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting developed important genres of independent still life subjects, which were just occasionally produced in Aertsen's day.
Unlike Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Aertsen's genre figures were mostly depicted (especially the women) idealized with considerable dignity and no effort at comedy, using poses that ultimately derived from classical art, and in some cases appear to have been borrowed from the contemporary court portraiture of artists such as Anthonis Mor. Two unusual individual genre portraits (probably not actual individuals) of female cooks in Genoa and Brussels, one full-length and the other in the three-quarter length format devised by Titian for royal portraits, show them holding roasting spits with poultry rather as though they were marshall's batons.