Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid". History, description

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

This small painting today has the unconditional status of a masterpiece of world significance, comparable to the works of Raphael and Leonardo, Rembrandt and Velasquez. Its author is considered a master who largely determined the significance of the Golden Age of Dutch painting of the 17th century.

As is usually the case with phenomena of art of this level, Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid" for more than three centuries of its existence has retained the possibility of a unique fresh subjective perception for anyone who saw it for the first time, and room for new interpretation by researchers of new generations.

Vermeer's Mystery

This master is today ranked by connoisseurs on a par with Rembrandt and Frans Hals - the pinnacles of the Dutch Golden Age, and for two centuries after his death he was considered an ordinary artisan, one of the many painters who painted canvases that adorned the walls of houses throughout Holland. The artist, who lived a little over 40 years, painted two paintings a year, although his fellow workers gave out several canvases a month, did not leave behind a clearbiography, not a single confirmed image of himself. One of the options for a hidden self-portrait is considered to be a cheerful gentleman, located on the left side of the painting "The Procuress".

The reason for forgetting the name of Vermeer is not clear - during his lifetime he enjoyed fame, however, it did not go beyond the borders of his native Delft. A lot of money was paid for his canvases, in particular, Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid" was bought for a huge sum of 175 guilders. It is believed that one of the reasons for his early death was poverty. The only thing that customers reproached him for was slowness in work. In total, the authorship of 34 works is officially confirmed, several more paintings are only attributed to Vermeer, and each of them is considered a world masterpiece, ahead of its time in subject and content, in form and technique, in terms of a set of artistic means.

Milkmaid or maid?

He worked very carefully on every tiny section of his paintings and was careless about fixing his authorship, time of creation and never gave them specific names. This fit into the strategy of his paintings. He invited the viewer to think out what was written based on his life experience and development, to finish the story that he began to tell in the picture.

In English, Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid" is often called The Milkmaid. This sometimes causes a heated discussion among art historians, who consider Vermeer a singer of Dutch urban life. They insist on the existence of a strict hierarchy of domesticservants, and a girl pouring milk from an earthenware jug - this is precisely a servant, perhaps a cook, who prepares a special bread pudding, which is present in the picture as part of a masterly painted still life.

It seems that the profession of a girl is the tenth thing, much more important is her amazing self-esteem and the warm attitude towards her that the artist expresses.

Kitchen Scene

Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid" is a very small painting - 45x41 cm. It is truly amazing in design and implementation. Before us is a very simple laconic composition, devoid of unnecessary details, which allows you to fill it to the brim with soft side light and air. The stocky but fine figure of the girl stands out clearly against the almost ascetic background of the wall. You can even see the white outline separating the main character from the background. This approach to filling the pictorial space was absolutely innovative - the painters of that time sought to impress the viewer with the richness and abundance of image details.

Perhaps Vermeer originally had such a desire. An X-ray study showed that some kind of complex image was located on the back wall, most likely a geographical map. But the master abandoned it, allowing him to focus on the figure of the main character, on her facial expression, carefully drawn clothes, the folds of the tablecloth and on the luxuriously painted still life.

There are enough details in the background to enrichthe content of the picture with additional allusions and colorize its picturesque row with the spectacular texture of the basket, the filigree decor of the tiles at the bottom of the wall and the spectacular accent of the brass oil lamp on the wall, harmonized with the active color of the tablecloth and the girl's skirt. Vermeer's painting "The Milkmaid" is a masterpiece of the great colorist!

Virtuoso technique

Art historians confirm that when working on the painting, Vermeer used a camera obscura - a special optical device that helped to achieve a high degree of reliability in building perspective reductions, color and light interactions of different parts of the canvas. Vermeer had a similar experience - in his legacy - outstanding in beauty, authenticity and expressiveness, "Veduta" - "View of the City of Delft" and "Little Street", which were simply impossible to perform without a camera obscura.

Evidence of the use of an optical device, the researchers saw in a slight loss of sharpness in the foreground, in the image of bread in a basket, which was a characteristic phenomenon for such devices. But in its application there is no belittling of the level of the professional skill of the artist. The description of the painting by Jan Vermeer “The Milkmaid”, from the point of view of painting technique, shows its highest level. This is proved by the freedom of combining wide, confident, dense strokes that model the girl’s face, confident molding of the form on the folds of fabric, and filigree dotted strokes that dotted the bread still life with a flicker of light. And the texture of the wall with marble overflows of peeling paint is amazing!

La Gioconda Effect

And yet, "The Milkmaid" - a painting by Vermeer - is, first of all, a subtle and multifaceted psychological work. The smile, hidden by the master on the contrasting border of the light falling on the girl's face, is endowed by attentive connoisseurs with elusiveness and ambiguity, comparable to that which is fraught with the great masterpiece of Leonardo. What does a young girl think about, looking at a thin stream of milk? Is she just tired? Dreaming? Remembered something?

Probably, the author of the painting "The Milkmaid" Jan Vermeer of Delft could not say this either. This secret, which has been living for more than three centuries, will continue to live on, as long as real art is alive.