A work of art is not only a painting that shows certain images, it is also a way of exposing reality, capturing the personality of the painter in each stroke and even expressing the mentality and anxieties of a given time. So with this article, we will explore all the mystery behind Vermeer's Milkmaid.
Vermeer's Milkmaid Identification and Description
The Milkmaid is a 45,5 x 41 cm oil on canvas by the famous Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer of Delf. In this work, the artist captures with all its details and certainty, the prudence and determination with which a domestic kitchen worker performs one of her most common tasks: pouring milk on ceramic pottery. The painting is currently in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The painters of that time used to represent in their works daily or habitual actions of life such as household chores, for example, so the costumbrista genre is something very characteristic in this work by Vermeer, in addition to having a Dutch baroque style that was used much to represent the wealth of Dutch families at the time. Although the exact year the painting was completed is unknown, experts determine that it was painted between 1658-1661.
- Author: Johannes Vermeer
- Chronology: 1658 to 1661
- Cooperation: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 45,5 x 41 cm
- Gender: Genre or costumbrist painting
- Style: Dutch Baroque
- Current location: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, The Netherlands
painting analysis
The first thing you see in this work is a woman pouring milk from a clay jug into a pot made of the same material. The spilled milk becomes the center of attention thanks to a trick of composition; which is the construction of two imaginary diagonals that meet on the woman's wrists. While the pitcher is tilted forward (as in this painting) or held in some suggestive way, according to many critics the painting refers to the female anatomy.
There is also a table covered with a green tablecloth and on it hangs a blue cloth. The table also contains elements of still life such as several pieces of bread, a bread basket and a blue ceramic jug, (it is interesting to observe how the painter used small bright dots on the bread, this is a technique known as puntillés) .
Vermeer's milkmaid who is herself a servant, possibly making bread porridge in the pot. The robust figure of the female is dazzled by the light that passes through the window, she has concentrated on her task so that her face reflects an immersion in her thoughts or simply her preparation. Some observers of the painting say that her thoughts may be linked to fantasizing about someone, noting that the blush on her cheeks may validate this idea.
As clothing which is very representative of the contemporary Dutch of the XNUMXth century, she wears a white linen hat, a yellow wool jacket, green and blue rolled-up sleeves that are not included in her jacket, a blue apron and a red skirt. At the scene location, sunlight enters through the window on the left.
Likewise, a bread basket can be detailed that hangs on the wall to the right of the window. A small painting with unknown content hangs above the basket and a metal container also hangs to the right of it. The large rear wall is white where you can notice the presence of a nail and some absences of them due to the small holes present in the work, in addition this wall is illuminated by sunlight through the window.
In the lower segment of this wall, there is a series of characteristic Delft Blue tiles. Obverse to these tiles is a kind of foot warmer with nine holes in the upper part and a bowl filled with embers inside, this object suggests feelings of warmth and lack thereof. In terms of iconography, it has been widely written that the symbolism of this denotes an awakening in the sexuality of the woman, since the embers insinuate that they will not only heat her feet but all the other parts of the body hidden under her skirt. .
So the foot warmer may have signaled the prevailing reputation of domestic servants, especially milkmaids, as sexually available, and from a pragmatic point of view may indicate women's hard work and need for rest in between.
Continuing with the observation of the painting, to the left of the heater there is a tile that has the figure of Cupid, while the tile to the right of the heater represents a man with a long cane. This last mentioned figure could also validate what was mentioned above in relation to the woman's thought, so it can be said that the character of her thought is an absent lover. The adjoining tile image on the far right presents an image that is deliberately indecipherable.
The material quality
This work of Vermeer's milkmaid presents various details that denote a certain legacy of the Flemish Renaissance painting school of the fifteenth century, among the most characteristic of this work the following are mentioned: the detail of the wicker basket, the nail that is on the wall and the heater containing a bowl filled with burning coals.
Composition and sense of space
The first thing that makes Vermeer's Milkmaid catch your eye is the strong triangular arrangement formed by the woman, the bread and the table. This area contains most of the board's colors, activities, and lights. Also, there is an implied line created by the woman's field of vision as she looks at the spilled milk. In a way, this helps keep her attention on this triangular area: so this makes you want to see where the woman is looking.
Outside the aforementioned area, there are some less important views in the composition: the Delft tiles and the foot warmer at the bottom of the wall; the hanging basket on the left; the nail and small holes in the wall; window; and what appears to be a picture frame hanging in the upper left corner.
In themselves, these are not key features of the painting, but they do play an important role in shaping the scene and drawing your attention to the painting. So the painter also adds the element: so the more you look, the more subtle the details become. Finally, it can be noted that all the details incorporated by the painter, including the interplay between hard, soft and missing edges, contribute to the remarkable sense of realism in this painting.
It is worth noting that hard edges suggest sudden changes in the subject, such as changing from light to dark fabric or from yellow to blue fabric. Soft, lost edges indicate a lack of clarity in areas masked by shadows.
The colors, light and texture
As for colors, Vermeer used a small number of pigments compared to his contemporary painter and color producer Rembrandt, who used over a hundred pigments. However, fewer than twenty pigments have been detected in Vermeer's works and ten of them appear to have been used regularly.
Interestingly, in Vermeer's day, each pigment differed from the other in terms of durability, drying time, and work. The difficulty of painting with these pigments was that many of them were often incompatible with each other and had to be used separately. While it is unlikely that Vermeer had all the pigments on his palette when creating any of his works, it is possible that he had the necessary pigments for each part of the painting he was working on.
This painter used to use seven different types such as: white lead, yellow ochre, vermilion, crazy red, earth green, raw amber and ivory black. A notable fact would be to say that in La Lechera there are shades of blue to paint. So Vermeer used a special pigment called ultramarine, which was more expensive and finer than the commonly used azurite.
Now as for the analysis of the painting, starting from the woman's face, it is important to focus on the light that filters through the window and that is reflected directly on her face in shadows and pale scales, creating a three-dimensional effect. For her face, the painter used small dabs of paint such as reddish brown, white, light ocher and brown mixed together to paint the shape of her face.
The window becomes one of the focal points of the painting, bringing light and luminosity to the portrait. So Vermeer pays the greatest attention to every detail of the painting; an ordinary object like the rustic window is meticulously painted paying attention to small details like a piece of broken glass or the irregularity of the window frame. As in this painting and others by Vermeer, the windows are so geometrically stylized that, in some cases, they appear to be abstract works of art in themselves.
The copper basket and bucket by the window elements of the painting, is painted in white, ocher and black, which are finally combined to match the wicker shape of the basket. Now, the slightly porous texture of the ceramic jug and the stippling with which the bread is painted give the image an extraordinary shine and naturalness.
In relation to the clothing, which many say is a winter dress due to the number of layers it has, the painter applied quick and thick touches of yellow and brown pigment to give it the required rough texture.
Now the way Vermeer included the effects of sunlight in this painting is particularly remarkable. The light is more visible when you look at the walls. The left wall is in shadow and the back wall is brightly lit. You can also see different shadows on the back wall. An obvious one is the shadow of the metal container to the left of the back wall.
Another point to highlight in relation to the work of light is seen in the window that is only partially included, here we can get a good idea of its real size by observing the presence or absence of shadows. For example, as the shadow of the milkmaid is not present, it tells us that the window does not extend far to the left. However, we can see the shadow of the fingernail at the top of the frame (over the Milkmaid's right shoulder), indicating that the window is quite tall.
Fun facts
When the painting was subjected to X-ray vision or modern analysis techniques, it can be seen that the current painting has a great change of pentimento or background, that is, objects that Vermeer placed first but later decided to change with others can be seen. objects.
The painter initially included a painting of a world map on the white wall. However, since the paintings were quite expensive at the time, he removed them to create an empty wall to simplify the room. Second, he also included a laundry basket next to the lower right part of the woman's red skirt, but later removed it as well. He probably removed this basket to put more emphasis on the main subject of this painting and not be too distracting for the viewer.
Regarding the woman's identity, some critics have speculated that Tanneke Everpoel was the Vermeer family's maid. And in a way, this portrait of her is associated with her because of some archival documents from 1663 where her existence and character are known.
As for the physical movement of painting, there is information that possibly when the painter died in 1674 around 21 works by Vermeer were bought by his patron from Delft, Pieter van Ruijven. When these paintings were sold at the estate of van Ruijven's son-in-law, Jacob Dissius in 1696, Vermeer's The Milkmaid was described as "exceptionally fine" and commanded the second highest price at the sale (Vermeer's celebrated cityscape, View of Delft (located in the Mauritshuis in The Hague), was a bit more expensive).
"Vermeer's Milkmaid" was subsequently auctioned in 1719 and then passed through at least five Amsterdam collections to one of the great Dutch art collectors, Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785-1845). In 1822 she married into the Six family of collectors, and it was through the heirs of Lucretia's two children that the Rijksmuseum in 1908 bought "The Milkmaid" with the support of the Dutch government and the Rembrandt Society. .
Context, author and other works
Vermeer's Milkmaid was a work that was painted at a time of great wealth and power in the Netherlands, when commerce, art, and science were developing to the point of being among the most famous in the world. In 1568, the seven provinces that signed the Union of Utrecht began an uprising against Felipe II of Spain that finally led to the Eighty Years' War. Before Spain recovered the Low Countries, England declared war on Spain and forced the Spanish troops to stop their advance.
The 80 Years' War finally culminated in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, where Spain and the United Republic of the Seven Netherlands signed the peace agreement. The Dutch East India Company established a Dutch monopoly on Asian trade that prevailed for two centuries. The Dutch also dominated trade between European countries, by 1680 an average of nearly 1.000 Dutch ships crossed the Baltic Sea each year.
In terms of social status, that of the Netherlands was largely determined by income. This brought a new way of looking at social classes. The aristocracy had sold most of its privileges to the cities where merchants and their money ruled. The clergy had no influence, as the Roman Catholic Church had been suppressed at the start of the Eighty Years' War.
Calvinism was the predominant religious movement of the time, and there are some rumors linking Vermeer to the Calvinist faith, although it is not clear whether he became a Catholic after marrying his wife.
The truth is, due to the strong teachings of Calvinism, the artists of the time were not allowed to depict sex in their paintings. However, Vermeer along with other artists of the time knew how to circumvent censorship by leaving subtle symbols that evoke lust or female sexuality, and this is something very much reflected in Vermeer's milkmaid.
Who is Vermeer?
Johannes Vermeer was born into a middle-class family in October 1632, a native of the Dutch market town of Delft. His father, named Reijnier Jansz, used to weave cloth for a living, then became an innkeeper and finally an art dealer. His mother, Digna Baltus, who was probably a housewife, there is not much information about her.
Education and formation
The teenage Vermeer is believed to have signed up as a painter's apprentice to his father in the mid-1640s, who was ready to pay the expensive fees to ensure his son had a bright future. Due to a lack of empirical evidence, it is impossible to name who Vermeer learned from, but several historians suggest that Rembrandt's star student, Carel Fabritius, gave Vermeer his initial education. Others believe that his teacher was the painter Pieter van Groenewegen, who was born in Delft and grew up in the Guild of St. Luke.
In 1653 Vermeer married Catharina Bolnes, daughter of a wealthy Catholic family in Delft. Although both sets of parents opposed the marriage due to conflicting Christian beliefs, the wedding took place after Vermeer's conversion to Catholicism.
Perhaps to demonstrate his devotion to his new religion and his in-laws, Vermeer painted Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-55), his only known depiction of a biblical narrative. His marriage to Catherine allowed Vermeer to move up the social ladder significantly, and it is believed that he later even reduced contact with his family while he lived in his mother-in-law's formidable home.
During this time of his marriage, Vermeer continued his father's legacy and signed on as a master painter at the Guild of Saint Luke, providing him with a variety of opportune events, patrons, and connections to further his career. His early works show the influence of masters such as Rembrandt, the Italian Caravaggio, and the Utrecht Caravaggisti painters such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen.
maturity time
In 1662 Vermeer became the head of the Guild of Saint Luke, which meant that he would have been in close contact with numerous Delft patrons, artists and collectors. The new position made him a self-respecting painter, although the few paintings that existed have led many scholars to believe that the artist only produced around three paintings a year.
Furthermore, the wealth of his wife's family made it possible for Vermeer to paint for his own pleasure, rather than support his family as was the case with most other painters, and he never hired anyone as a student or apprentice.
The painter was also known to have used expensive pigments such as lapis lazuli for the milkmaid's skirt and deep carmine for the wineglass girl's dress. While some have suggested that Vermeer's patron, Pieter van Ruijven, purchased and supplied the artist with these exclusive ingredients, it is perhaps not surprising that it was around this time that the painter began his own slide into debt.
Late time and death
The year 1975 was when Vermeer died, he left behind so much debt that his family couldn't afford a tombstone for him. In Dutch history, the year 1672 was called "The Year of Disaster" due to the invasion of the Dutch Republic by the French, German and British armies. This led to a dramatic economic collapse for the once prosperous middle-class country.
The art market crashed, and Vermeer could barely afford to support himself, his wife, his mother, and their eleven children. He fell deeper and deeper into debt, borrowing thousands of guilders and was even caught keeping his mother-in-law's money from him.
Specifically, Vermeer died on December 16, 1675, after falling into a fit of madness and depression. In court records, his wife stated:
«…during the ruinous war with France he was not only unable to sell one of his works, but also sat at a great disadvantage with paintings by other masters who as a result and due to the great burden of his children not having his own resources , fell into such decline and depression, that he had taken himself as seriously as if in a day and a half he had gone into a frenzy and gone from sane to dead."
The legacy
Due to great local fame during his lifetime, Vermeer seemed to disappear from the art world until the XNUMXth century, when French artists such as Édouard Manet; when he began to look back at the real and unassuming. And because Vermeer had been so adept at capturing moments of ordinary beauty, he became such an influence on these artists, who revived awareness of the master's work.
Although only 34 (three most controversial Vermeer) of his pieces have survived, Vermeer is today considered one of the greatest artists of the Dutch golden age. In the 1934th century, surrealist Salvador Dalí became fascinated by Vermeer's work and produced his own variations, including Vermeer's Delft Ghost, which can be used as a table in 1955, and The Lacemaker (after Vermeer) in XNUMX.
Other artists, such as the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi, adapted Vermeer's tranquil interiors to their own XNUMXth- and XNUMXth-century themes. Hammershoi modernized Woman in Blue by reading a Vermeer letter, inverting the image and toning down the color palette so that it almost appears as if the audience is looking at an old photo of a Danish living room.
Among many of Vermeer's sublime paintings, the Girl with a Pearl Earring is considered the "Mona Lisa of the North." Her stunning realism and emotional ambiguity have inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers for decades. More recently, anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy has reinterpreted and reproduced the painting on a building in Bristol, UK. A burglar alarm was used instead of the legendary pearl earring.
Vermeer achievements
This artist specialized in scenes of domestic life, a genre that helped catapult the Baroque lexicon. Many of his paintings contain the same furnishings or motifs as he lived in his own private studio, and his models were often women he knew or relatives of patrons.
Vermeer was also posthumously awarded the title of "Master of Light" due to the sensitive attention he paid to expressing how light played with skin, fabric, and gems in his work. His expertise stems from his use of Renaissance techniques such as chiaroscuro, mixed with his own distinctive use of light, shadow and color to evoke texture, depth and emotion.
Colors and pigments were of great interest to Vermeer and he was known for his exquisite combination of ethereal hues. His patron, Pieter van Rujiven, is said to have purchased and provided the artist with expensive ingredients such as lapis lazuli and carmine for these endeavours. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was at this time that the painter began borrowing himself from him, compulsive as he was with his valuable materials.
Vermeer was a modestly successful painter in his lifetime, but today only 34 paintings are attributed to him (some others are questionable), signifying the artist's semi-reckless management of his career, which would eventually leave him and his family indebted and desperate.
Since economic uncertainty, madness, and depression reinforced the artist's life, it has been assumed that the quiet idyll Vermeer was known for depicting in painting reflected a world he himself might have wanted to live in.
Other works by Vermeer
Among the works of the Dutch painter Vermeer that can be admired and observed available to the public, the following can be mentioned:
- Christ in the house of Martha and Mary from 1654-1656
- The procurator of 1656
- The Officer and the Laughing Girl from 1657-1660
- The Girl with the Wine Glass, 1659
- The view of Delft from 1660-1661
- Woman in Blue Reading a Letter from 1662-1663
- The Music Lesson or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman 1662-1665
- The Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665
- The Lady and the Maid of 1667
- The astronomer of 1668
- Seated Lady at a Virginal, 1672
- The allegory of faith from 1670-1674
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