The Milkmaid (Dutch: De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje ), sometimes called The Kitchen Maid , is an oil painting on the canvas "milkmaid", in fact, housekeeper housekeeper, by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, who regard it as "undoubtedly one of the museum's best attractions".
The exact year of completion of the painting is unknown, with estimates varying by source. Rijksmuseum estimated it around 1658. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the painting was painted around the year 1657 or 1658. The "Vermeer Essential" website gives a wider range of 1658-1661.
Video The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
Description and comment
Although the title is traditional, the picture clearly shows a kitchen or housekeeper, low-level housekeeper, rather than a milkmaid who actually preys on cows, in ordinary rooms carefully pouring milk into pottery squatting pot (now commonly known as "Dutch Oven") on the table. Also on the table are different types of bread. He is a tall young woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and a working arm pushed from a thick forearm. A foot warmer is on the floor behind it, near the Delft wall tile depicting Cupid (to the left of the viewer) and a figure with a pole (to the right). Intense light flows from the window on the left side of the canvas.
The painting is very illusionist, conveying not only details but also the weight of women and tables. "The light, though bright, does not wash rough textures from breadcrumbs or flatten the volume of thick waist maid and round shoulders," writes Karen Rosenberg, art critic for The New York Times. But with half the woman's face in the shadows, it is "impossible to say whether the eyes are bowed and their pursed lips expressing wistfulness or concentration," he wrote.
"This is somewhat of a Mona Lisa effect" in the reaction of modern viewers of the painting, according to Walter Liedtke, curator of the European painting department at the Metropolitan Art Museum, and the organizer of two Vermeer Exhibitions. "There's a bit of mystery about him for a modern audience, he's doing his daily duties, smiling faintly, and our reaction is 'What's he thinking?'"
Dutch Iconography of servants
The woman would be known as a "kitchen maid" or a maid of all work rather than a special "milkmaker" at the time the painting was made: "milk waiter" was a woman who milked a cow; the kitchen maid worked in the kitchen. For at least two centuries before the painting was made, the maids and kitchen attendants had a reputation for being loving or having sex, and this was often reflected in the Dutch painting of the kitchen and market scene of Antwerp, Utrecht, and Delft. Some sneaky paintings, like The Milkmaid , others are more rude.
The leading artists of this tradition are the Antwerp painter Joachim Beuckelaer (c 1535-1575) and Frans Snyders (1579-1657), who has many followers and imitators, and Pieter Aertsen (who, like Beukelaer, had a client in Delft), Painters Utrecht painter Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638), and his son, Peter Wtewael (1596-1660). Closer to Vermeer's day, Nicolaes Maes paints some comic drawings now titled as The Lazy Servant . But today there are alternative conventions of women painting at home at work as an example of the Dutch domestic virtues, dealt with at length by Simon Schama.
In Dutch literature and the paintings of the Vermeer period, the servants are often portrayed as the subject of men's desires - dangerous women threatening the honor and security of the home, the center of Dutch life - though some of the Vermeer contemporaries, such as Pieter de Hooch, have begun to represent them with a more neutral way, as Michael Sweerts did. Vermeer's painting is one of the rare examples of a servant who is treated in an empathetic and dignified way, even though the symbols of romance in this work still show tradition.
Other painters in this tradition, such as Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), describe an attractive servant with symbolic objects such as jugs and various forms of game and production. "In almost all the works of this tradition there are erotic elements, which are delivered through motions ranging from chicken jamming to saliva to soft offer - or so the direction of view shows - a glimpse of intimacy of some vague uterine objects," according to Liedtke. In the painting of Dou's 1646, Girl Chopping Onions (now in the British Royal Collection), tin tin can refer to male and female anatomy, and the image contains other contemporary lust symbols, such as onions (said to have aphrodisical properties) , and birds hanging. Milk also has an obscene connotation, from the term slang melken , which is defined as "to attract or attract sexually" (meaning that may come from watching the peasant girls working under the cow, according to Liedtke). Examples of works that use milk in this way include the carvings of Lucas van Leyden The Milkmaid (1510) and the carvings of Jacques de Gheyn II The Archer and the Milkmaid (circa 1610).
Vermeer's paintings are even more modest, though the use of fixed symbols: one of Delft's tiles at the foot of the wall behind the maid, near the warm feet, depicts Cupid - which may imply a woman's passion or just that while she works she daydreams about a man. Other symbols in the painting include a wide-mouth jug, often used as a symbol of female anatomy. The warmer legs are often used by artists as a symbol for female sexual arousal because, when placed under the skirt, it heats the entire body below the waist, according to Liedtke. Coal flanked in warm feet can symbolize "either the heat of lust in the shop or the scene of prostitution, or the hidden but true passion for her husband," according to Serena Cant, a British art historian and lecturer. But the whitewashed walls and the presence of milk seem to indicate that the room is a "cool kitchen" used for cooking with dairy products, such as milk and butter, so that leg warmers will have a pragmatic purpose there. Because other Dutch paintings of that era showed that foot warmers are used when sitting, its presence in the image can symbolize the nature of "hard work of women," according to Cant.
The painting is part of the social context of the sexual or romantic interactions of servants and men from higher social ranks that have now disappeared in Europe and never been publicly known in America, according to Liedtke, who offers a contemporary example of Vuberer, Samuel Pepys, diary who records meetings with kitchen helpers, oyster girls and, at an inn during a 1660 visit to Delft, with "a very beautiful and proper girl for sport". This painting was first owned by (and probably has been painted for) Pieter van Ruijven, the owner of several other paintings by Vermeer who also portray an attractive young lady and with themes of selfish desires and self-denials quite different from the Pepys attitude and many of the deep paintings Dutch "princess kitchen" tradition.
In the Netherlands, Het Melkmeisje is the most widely used name in the painting. Although the title is less accurate in modern Dutch, the word "meid" has received a negative tone that does not exist in its tiny form ("meisje") - hence the use of a more friendly title for the work, used by Rijksmuseum and others.
Narrative and thematic elements
According to art historian Harry Rand, the painting shows that the woman made a bread pudding, which would explain milk and broken pieces of bread on the table. Rand assumed that he had made a pudding where the bread mixed with the eggs would get wet at the moment described in the painting. She pours milk into the Dutch oven to cover the mixture because otherwise the bread, if not boiling in liquid when baked, would be an unattractive dry crust instead of forming a top surface of a distinctive pudding. He is careful in pouring droplets of milk because bread pudding can be damaged when the ingredients are not measured accurately or combined properly.
By describing the waiters who work in the act of cooking carefully, the artist presents not only pictures of everyday scenery, but one with ethical and social value. The humble woman uses common materials and stale bread which is useless to create a product that is pleasing to the household. "His measurable, simple and thoughtful attitudes in preparing his food show eloquently but not as conspicuously as one of the seventeenth century Dutch values, domestic virtue," according to the Essential Vermeer website.
"In the end, it's not the sexual innuendo of a woman who gives this painting a romance or an emotional resonance - it is a depiction of honest work and hard as something romantic in itself," Raquel Laneri wrote in Compositional strategy
The impression of monumentality and "perhaps sense of dignity" is lent to the drawing by the artist's choice from a relatively low point of view and the formation of a pyramid from a form from the foreground to the female head, according to The Metropolitan Art Museum's webpage. According to the Rijksmuseum, the paintings "are built along two diagonal lines, they meet with the woman's right wrist." It focuses the viewer's attention on pouring milk.
The photo-like realism of the painting is similar to that of Leiden artists such as Dou, Frans van Mieris, and GabriÃÆ'ÂÂ Â «M Metsu. Vermeer, who was twenty-five years old when painting this work, "shopping in Dutch art for different styles and subjects", according to Liedtke. "He seeks, in this case, especially on artists like Gerrit Dou and others who work in a very thorough and illusionist way." Liedtke sees this work as "Vermeer's first early work or adult work". The curator added, "I almost think he should explore what you call 'tactile illusionism' to understand where he really wants to go, which is in a more optical and light-filled direction."
Characteristics of Delft art and Vermeer's work, the painting also has a "classical balance" of figurative elements and "extraordinary light treatment", according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The wall on the left, according to Liedtke, "makes you very fast in the picture - recession from the left and then openness to the right - and this kind of left-angle scheme is used for about 10 years before Vermeer, and he's very quick to pick up the latest stuff."
"Elsewhere on his oeuvre no one has found such a statue and anything that looks real, but the future painter of the glowing interior has arrived," according to the museum. The " pointillÃÆ' Â © pattern of bright dots on bread and baskets" is the "most vociferous" use of the scheme in Vermeer's paintings, and seems to be used to suggest "glowing daylight and coarse textures on at the same time. "
Vermeer painted more than two objects that were originally in the painting. One is a large wall map (the Rijksmuseum's webpage calls it a painting) behind the woman's upper body. (The wall map might not be that great in a simple workspace like the cold kitchen where the waitress works hard: the big map in the 17th century Dutch is a cheap way to decorate the bare walls.) She initially puts big and striking clothes. basket (the Rijksmuseum webpage calls it a "sewing basket") near the bottom of the painting, behind the auxiliary red skirt, but then the artist painted it on it, resulting in a slight pentimento shift on the wall behind the warmer legs. The basket was later found with X-rays. Other Vermeer paintings also have deleted images. Some art critics think that the abolition was probably intended to provide works with a better thematic focus.
"[I] ts rural closeness differs from Vermeer's later paintings," according to Laneri. "There's a touch, visceral quality for The Milkmaid - you can almost feel the thick and thick milk coming out of the jug, feeling the cold humidity of the room and the flour linen from the helper's white hat, touching the shoulders of the statue and the waist, sightings or abstractions, she is not an ideal and worldly housewife of Vermeer later Young Women with Water Pitchers or subtle beauty in Girls with a Pearl Earring She is not a vixen buxom cartoon in Leyden's drawings. He is real - as real as painting can be.
Techniques and materials
This painting has "perhaps, the most brilliant color scheme of its oeuvre", according to the Essential Vermeer website. Already in the 18th century, British painter and critic Joshua Reynolds praised the work for its striking quality. One of Vermeer's palette differences, compared to his contemporaries, is his fondness for costly natural ultramarines (made from crushed layered lazuli) where other painters usually use a much cheaper azurite. Along with ultramarine, tin-yellow is also the dominant color in a very luminous job (with a much more gloomy and conventional rendering of light than any previous VERTER works that still exist). Describing the white walls is a challenge for artists in the Vermeer era, with contemporaries using different forms of gray pigment. Here the white walls reflect daylight with a different intensity, displaying an uneven texture effect on a plastered surface. The artist here uses white tin, lots of charcoal and black. Although this formula is widely known among the contemporary Vermeer contemporary artists, "perhaps no more artist than Vermeer can use it very effectively", according to the Essential Vermeer website.
The rough features of the lady were painted with thick impasto . The seeds on the bread crust, as well as the crust itself, along with the woven basket handle of the bread, are provided with a pointillÃÆ' Â © point. The soft parts of the bread are made with a thin circle of paint, with ocher spreads used to show the rough edges of the cracked crust. A piece of bread to the right of viewers and close to the Dutch oven, has a yellow ribbon, different from the crust, which Cant believe is a suggestion that the piece will be stale. Small rolls on the right end have thick impasto dots that resemble a protruding crust or crust with seeds on top. Bread and basket, though closer to the viewer, are painted in a more diffuse way than the illusionistic realism of the walls, with stains, shadows, nails and nail holes, or the stitches and binders of the gleaming, shimmering, brass-hanging brass-walled dressing. Glass panels in windows vary in a very realistic way, with cracks in one (fourth row from bottom, far right) reflected on wooden window frames. Just below that panel, others have scratches, marked with a thin white line. Other panels (second row from bottom, second from right) are pushed into the frame.
The difference between objects at various distances from the viewer can indicate Vermeer using camera obscura , according to Cant. Liedtke points out that the pinhole found on the canvas "has completely pierced the obscura camera theory. [...] The idea that Vermeer traces the composition in optical devices [...] is rather naive when you consider that light it lasts maybe 10 seconds, but the painting takes at least months to paint. "Instead, the pin on the canvas will be tied to a string with chalk on it, which the artist will throw to get perspective lines, Liedtke said in an interview in 2009.
The large green oversleeve of the lady was painted with the same yellow and blue paint used in the rest of the woman's clothing, working at the same time in the wet-on-wet method. Extensive strokes in clothing paintings show a rough and thick texture of work clothes. Blue cuffs use a mild mixture of navy blue and white tin, along with an ocher layer painted underneath. Brilliant blue skirts or aprons have been intensified with glazes (transparent thin tops) of the same color. The glass helps show that the blue material is a rougher fabric than a yellow corset, according to Cant.
Maps The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
Provenance
Pieter van Ruijven (1624-1674), Vuber's patron at Delft (and, at the time of his death, the owner of twenty-one works of artists), may purchase the painting directly from the artist. Liedtke doubted that the guard ordered the subject matter. The ownership then continued, perhaps for his widow, Maria de Knuijt, perhaps their daughter, Magdelene van Ruijven (1655-1681), and of course to Van Ruijven's son-in-law, Jacob Dissius (1653-1695), whose land sold him with other paintings by artists on year 1696. The sales record depicts The Milkmaid as "excellent", and the work carries the second highest price in sales (175 guilders, surpassed only by 200 guilders paying for Cityscape Vermeer, View of the Delft .)
In 1765 the painting was auctioned by Leendert Pieter de Neufville. "The famous Milkmaid, by Vermeer of Delft, artful," has gone through at least five Amsterdam collections before becoming part of the so-called Metropolitan Art Museum "one of the great collectors of Dutch art", Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785-1845). In 1822 he married a Six-family collector, and in 1908 his two sons sold the painting (as part of six famous collections of thirty nine works) to the Rijksmuseum, which obtained works with the support of the Dutch government and the Rembrandt Society - but not before much public squabbling and intervention from the Dutch states or parliaments.
Exhibition
The painting has been exhibited in Western Europe and in the United States. In 1872, this was part of an Amsterdam exhibition of "old gentlemen" ("Horseman van zeldzame en belangrijke schilderijen van oude meesters"), for the Meaning et Amicitiae, a community of visual artists and art lovers, and in 1900 it is part of the exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Other European exhibitions showing works included the Royal Academy of Arts ("Dutch Art Exhibition", London) in 1929; Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume ("Exposition hollandaise: Tableaux, aquarelles et dessÃÆ'ns anciens et modernes", Paris) in 1921; Museum of Boijmans Van Beuningen ("Vermeer, oorsprong en invloed: Fabritius, De Hooch, De Witte", Rotterdam) in 1935.
It was exhibited at the 1939 World Fair in New York City, and the outbreak of World War II during the exhibition - with German occupation in Holland - led to work to remain in the US until the Dutch were released. During this time it was shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (museum where the curator of the World Exhibition exhibition works), and was included in the museum's exhibit catalog in 1939 and 1941. During the war, the work was also featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York , where it hung until late 1944, according to Leidtke. In 1953, Kunsthaus ZÃÆ'¼rich displayed the painting in an exhibition, and the following year he went to Italy for an exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In 1966, it was part of an exhibition at Mauritshuis in The Hague and Musà © à e de l'Orangerie in Paris. In 1999 and 2000 the painting was at the National Art Gallery in Washington for the exhibition "Johannes Vermeer: ​​The Art of Painting", and it was part of the Vermeer and the Delft School exhibition at the National Gallery, London from June 20 to September 16, 2001 (did not appear on the premises of the Metropolitan Art Museum exhibit, earlier that year).
The painting returned to New York in 2009, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's (Amsterdam to Manhattan) historic journey, where it was a key feature of the Metropolitan Art Museum exhibition, along with some of the Vermeer museum's five works and Dutch Golden Age paintings others.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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