Centáureas (Cornflowers) - Anne Cotterill

                                                           
Centáureas (Cornflowers) - Anne Cotterill
Coleção privada
OST - 29x24

Flores Silvestres Em Um Vaso Azul (Wild Flowers in a Blue Vase) - Anne Cotterill

                                             
Flores Silvestres Em Um Vaso Azul (Wild Flowers in a Blue Vase) - Anne Cotterill
Coleção privada
OST - 32x27

Coliseu, Roma, 1885, Itália

                                                                   
Coliseu, Roma, 1885, Itália
Roma - Itália
Fotografia

Flores Wallflowers (Wallflowers) - Anne Cotterill

                                                       
Flores Wallflowers (Wallflowers) - Anne Cotterill
Coleção privada
OST - 30x30

Revista "O Immigrante" N. 1, 1908, São Paulo, Brasil

                                                 
Revista "O Immigrante" N. 1, 1908, São Paulo, Brasil
São Paulo - SP
Capa de revista destinada a promover a imigração para o Brasil
PDF: http://200.144.6.120/uploads/acervo/periodicos/revistas/IM19080101.pdf                                                                     

Oficial e Moça Sorridente (De Soldaat en Het Lachende Meisje or Officer and Laughing Girl) - Johannes Vermeer

                                           
Oficial e Moça Sorridente (De Soldaat en Het Lachende Meisje or Officer and Laughing Girl) - Johannes Vermeer
The Frick Collection, Nova York, Estados Unidos
OST - 50x46 - Aproximadamente 1657-1658

Officer and Laughing Girl, also known as Officer and a Laughing Girl, Officer With a Laughing Girl or De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje, was painted by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer between 1655 and 1660. It was painted in oil on canvas, typical of most Dutch artists of the time, and is 50.5 by 46 cm. It now resides in The Frick Collection in New York.

Officer and Laughing Girl includes many of the characteristics of Vermeer's style. The main subject is a woman in a yellow dress, light is coming from the left-hand side of the painting from an open window, and there is a large map on the wall. Each of these elements occur in some of his other paintings, although this painting differs slightly with the man also sitting at the table. Art historians, who have suggested conflicting interpretations of the work, believe that a painting by Gerard van Honthorst inspired the composition and that Vermeer used a camera obscura to create the perspective in this painting.

he main subject is the woman, and soft, direct light falls on her face. She resembles Vermeer's wife, Catharina Bolnes, who is believed to have posed for many of his paintings. With x-ray photographs, art historians can see that Vermeer had planned to paint the woman with a large white collar which would have hidden much of her yellow dress. Also, her cap was later extended to cover all of her hair, in order to draw attention to her face and expression. This yellow bodice with braiding has appeared in many of Vermeer's other portraits. It is called a schort and was usually worn as an everyday, common dress. The woman is also wearing a blue apron over her dress, but it is hidden in the shadows caused by the table. Blue aprons were common attire at that time because they hid stains well. Art historians have interpreted this to mean that the soldier surprised the girl with an impromptu visit during her morning chores. The woman is holding a wine glass, usually used for white wine. Because at that time, wine cost more than beer, it illustrates her wealth.

The man in the painting is a cavalier wearing a red coat and an expensive hat, showing his wealth and rank. His hat is wide- brimmed and made of beaver pelt, which was weather resistant and good for snowy and rainy conditions. The pelts for these hats were imported from the New World. This hat was probably from New Netherlands, which was then under the Dutch West India Company's control. The red in his uniform is associated with power and passion, bringing a passionate and emotional mood to the painting. His rank as an officer is identified by the black sash he wears. However, his presence in the immediate foreground is what the viewers notice first. His striking presence adds drama and mystery to the mood of the composition. This artistic device—in which an object is placed in the foreground to increase the depth of field of the overall painting—is called repoussoir. Caravaggio often used this technique and Vermeer probably learned it from a Caravaggist's painting.

The meaning of the interaction between the woman and the soldier is unknown. Many art historians believe that it only portrays a woman being innocently and honorably courted by this soldier. However, some have argued that her open hand and smile could be asking for payment before coitus.

"The Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer of Delft (1632-1675) holds a position of great honor among map historians. Several of his painting illustrate maps hanging on walls or globes standing on tables or cabinets. Vermeer painted these cartographical documents with such detail that it is often possible to identify the actual maps. Evidently, Vermeer was particularly attached to a Willem Blaeu - Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode map of Holland and West Friesland, as he represented it as a wall decoration in three of his paintings... Though no longer extant, the map's existence is known from archival sources and second edition published by Willem Blaeu in 1621, titled "Nova et Accurata Totius Hollandiae Westfriesiaeq. Topographia, Descriptore Balthazaro Florentio a Berke[n]rode Batavo". Vermeer must have had a copy at his disposal (or the earlier one published by Van Berckenrode). Around 1658 he showed it as a wall decoration in his painting "Officer and Laughing Girl", which depicts a soldier in a large hat sitting with his back to viewer, talking with a smiling girl who holds a glass in her hand. Bright sunlight bathes the girl and the large map on the wall. Vermeer's gift for realism is evidenced by the fact that the wall map, mounted on linen and wooden rods, is identifiable as Blaeu's 1621 map of Holland and West Friesland. He captures all of its characteristic design, decoration, and geographic content."

The window and lighting is characteristic of Vermeer's interior paintings, most likely because it is modeled after the room he painted in. This window is extremely similar to the window in the Girl Reading a Letter and Open Window and the Milkmaid. The glass in the window has many variations of color, showing Vermeer's precision in the details of this painting. Only bright light comes in from the window and no outside scene can be observed, as Vermeer never allows the viewer to see the outside world.

Art historians believe that Vermeer used a device called a camera obscura to help him create the perspective in his painting. Instead of using a mathematical formula or a vanishing point, Vermeer probably used this mechanical device to show him what the relative size of the people should be. A camera obscura is similar to a camera as it projects an image seen through the aperture into a dark chamber. There is no historical evidence that Vermeer used such a device but the way he portrays perspective in many of his paintings, including Officer and Laughing Girl, suggests that he did.

The older pigment analysis by W. Kuhn and also the more recent data collection revealed the use of the typical pigments of the Baroque period: ochres, lead-tin-yellow, natural ultramarine, and azurite.

A Alcoviteira (The Procuress) - Johannes Vermeer

                                                     
A Alcoviteira (The Procuress) - Johannes Vermeer
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Alemanha
OST - 143x130 - 1656

The Procuress is a 1656 oil-on-canvas painting by the 24-year-old Johannes Vermeer. It can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. It is his first genre painting and shows a scene of contemporary life, an image of mercenary love, perhaps in a brothel. It differs from his earlier biblical and mythological scenes. It is one of only three paintings Vermeer signed and dated (the other two are The Astronomer and The Geographer).

It seems Vermeer was influenced by earlier works on the same subject by Gerard ter Borch, and The Procuress (c. 1622) by Dirck van Baburen, which was owned by Vermeer's mother-in-law Maria Thins and hung in her home

The woman in black, the leering coupler, "in a nun's costume", could be the eponymous procuress, while the man to her right, "wearing a black beret and a doublet with slashed sleeves", has been identified as a self portrait of the artist. There is a resemblance with the painter in Vermeer's The Art of Painting.

The man, a soldier, in the red jacket is fondling the young woman's breast and dropping a coin into her outstretched hand. According to Benjamin Binstock the painting could be understood as a psychological portrait of his adopted family. Vermeer is in the painting as a musician, in the employ of the madam. In his rather fictional book Binstock explains Vermeer used his family as models; the procuress could be Vermeer's wife Catherina and the lewd soldier her brother Willem.

The three-dimensional jug on the oriental rug is a piece of Westerwald Pottery. The kelim thrown over a bannister, probably produced in Uşak, covers a third of the painting and shows medaillons and leaves. The instrument is probably a cittern. The dark coat with five buttons was added by Vermeer in a later stage.

In 1696 the painting, being sold on an auction in Amsterdam, was named "A merry company in a room". According to Binstock this "dark and gloomy" painting does not represent a didactic message.

Some critics thought the painting is atypical of Vermeer's style and expression, because it lacks the typical light.

Pieter Swillens wrote in 1950 that—if the work was by Vermeer at all—it showed the artist "seeking and groping" to find a suitable mode of expression. Eduard Trautscholdt wrote 10 years before that "The temperament of the 24-year-old Vermeer fully emerges for the first time".

The painting was in the Waldstein collection in Dux (now Duchcov), then bought in 1741 for August III of Poland, the Elector of Saxony.

The painting was exhibited in 1980 at the Restaurierte Kunstwerke in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republic exhibit in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Altes Museum.

This painting should not be confused with another painting by the same name, by Dirck van Baburen, nor with a fake version once attributed to Vermeer which technical analysis in 2011 disclosed that there's Bakelite in the paint, definitely proving that the painting is a modern forgery. It was most probably executed by the notorious forger, Han van Meegeren, who was responsible for producing several fake Vermeers and known to use said resin to harden the paint.

The technical investigation of this painting was done in 1968 by Hermann Kühn. The pigment analysis revealed Vermeer's use of his usual pigments such as ultramarine in the blue wine jug and lead-tin-yellow in the jacket of the woman. He employed also smalt in the green parts of the tablecloth and in the greenish background which is less usual for him.

Moça com Brinco de Pérola (Het Meisje Met de Parel / Girl with a Pearl Earring) - Johannes Vermeer

                                         
Moça com Brinco de Pérola (Het Meisje Met de Parel / Girl with a Pearl Earring) - Johannes Vermeer
Museu Mauritshuis, Haia, Holanda
OST - 46x40 - Aproximadamente 1665

Moça com o Brinco de Pérola (em neerlandês: Meisje met de parel) é uma pintura do artista neerlandês Johannes Vermeer de 1665. Como o seu nome indica, é utilizado um brinco de pérola como ponto focal. A pintura está no Mauritshuis de Haia. É muitas vezes referido como "a Mona Lisa do Norte" ou "a Mona Lisa holandesa".

Em geral, muito pouco se sabe sobre Vermeer e as suas obras. Esta pintura está assinada como "IVMeer", mas não está datada. Não está claro se este trabalho foi encomendado, e em caso afirmativo, por quem. Em qualquer caso, é provável que não pretenda ser um retrato convencional. Mais recentemente a literatura sobre Vermeer aponta para a imagem de ser um "tronie", a descrição para o holandês do século XVII de que uma "cabeça" não era para ser um retrato. Após a restauração mais recente da pintura em 1994, o esquema de cores subtis e a intimidade da menina olhando para o espectador foi muito aumentado. Não se conhece quem foi a modelo para a pintura. 

Seguindo o conselho de Victor de Stuers, que durante anos tentou impedir obras raras de Vermeer de serem vendidas a terceiros no exterior, A.A. des Tombe comprou a obra num leilão em Haia, em 1881, por apenas dois florins e trinta centavos. Na época, a pintura estava em más condições. Des Tombe não tinha herdeiros e doou esta e outras pinturas para o Mauritshuis, em 1902.

Em 1937, uma pintura muito semelhante, "The Smiling Girl" (pt: A Moça Sorridente), na época também se pensava ser obra de Vermeer, foi doado pelo colecionador Andrew W. Mellon para a National Gallery of Art, em Washington DC, é agora amplamente considerada como uma farsa. O perito em trabalhos de Vermeer, Arthur Wheelock alegou, num estudo de 1995 que é obra do artista e falsificador do século XX Theo van Wijngaarden, um amigo de Han van Meegeren.

A modelo delicada com seu olhar direto e os lábios entreabertos é a obra mais famosa do pintor holandês Jan Vermeer, sendo considerada como a “Mona Lisa” da arte holandesa (ou a Mona Lisa do Norte). Infelizmente, nada se conhece sobre a história de tão esplêndida composição, que apareceu pela primeira vez em 1881, num leilão em Haia, Holanda e que é a principal atração do Museu Mauritshuis, na cidade onde foi leiloada.

Ao olhar tão delicada composição, o observador é imediatamente cativado pela misteriosa moça com o seu turbante exótico. O tom de sua pele clara e pura é salientado pelo brilho de seu brinco de pérola. Os historiadores de arte sabem que jamais saberão com certeza quem foi a garota que inspirou o artista, servindo-lhe de modelo, embora muitos críticos de arte acreditem ser a primeira filha do pintor, Maria, que à época teria cerca de 12 ou 13 anos de idade.

É interessante saber que o turbante que Vermeer usa em sua modelo não encontra similar na pintura europeia, pois, no século 17, uma garota holandesa dificilmente seria vista usando um turbante. Por isso, os estudiosos no assunto creem que o pintor encontrou sua inspiração na pintura de Michael Sweerts, denominada “Menino em um Turbante” (foto menor), pintada cerca de dez anos antes de Moça com Brinco de Pérola.

Vermeer pintou a parte azul do turbante da moça com ultramarino natural, pigmento mais valioso do que o ouro à época, feito de lápis-lazúli esmagado que os contemporâneos do pintor dificilmente usavam em razão de seu preço exorbitante. Mesmo na época em que sua situação econômica era extremamente precária, Vermeer continuou fazendo uso de tal pigmento em suas pinturas, resultando num azul inigualável.

O brinco que tanto chama a atenção do observador parece uma pérola branca. Foi feito com uma mancha branca espessa de empasto, sobre a qual incidem os mesmos raios de luz que iluminam o rosto, o turbante e o colarinho branco da moça. Sua forma ovoide repassa a sensação de peso e volume, o que não aconteceria se ele fosse redondo.

O fundo preto da composição não mais possui a sua cor originária. Uma análise feita na obra revelou que poderia ter sido um verde brilhante forte e profundo, destacando ainda mais a beleza da figura. A cor preta aumenta a sensação de tridimensionalidade da moça.

A modelo veste uma roupa branca por baixo, cuja gola sobressai. Por cima usa uma peça rústica de cor ocre amarela que se parece com uma capa ou uma outra peça de roupa folgada, de corte rústico, feita de tecido. Não é possível ao observador ignorar os belos olhos da modelo que o acompanham onde quer que ele se encontre. Confira!

A pintura Moça com Brinco de Pérola foi completamente restaurada em 1994, quando deixou à vista o fantástico efeito tridimensional da figura, sua cor brilhante e detalhes dos tons da pele até então escondidos, mostrando como foram originalmente pintados. Pode-se ver, a partir de então, um diminuto lampejo de luz no canto esquerdo da boca da modelo.  Contudo, não foi possível descobrir os métodos empregados pelo artista em suas pinceladas, pois se temia ao aprofundar no estudo, danificar a obra. Nos dias de hoje, a tecnologia permite compilar os dados e posteriormente fazer uma recriação virtual da obra.

The painting is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a 'head' that was not meant to be a portrait. It depicts a European girl wearing an exotic dress, an oriental turban, and an improbably large pearl earring. In 2014, Dutch astrophysicist Vincent Icke [nl] raised doubts about the material of the earring and argued that it looks more like polished tin than pearl on the grounds of the specular reflection, the pear shape and the large size of the earring.

The work is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm (17.5 in) high and 39 cm (15 in) wide. It is signed "IVMeer" but not dated. It is estimated to have been painted around 1665.

After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle colour scheme and the intimacy of the girl's gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced. During the restoration, it was discovered that the dark background, today somewhat mottled, was initially intended by the painter to be a deep enamel-like green. This effect was produced by applying a thin transparent layer of paint, called a glaze, over the present-day black background. However, the two organic pigments of the green glaze, indigo and weld, have faded.

On the advice of Victor de Stuers, who for years tried to prevent Vermeer's rare works from being sold to parties abroad, Arnoldus Andries des Tombe purchased the work at an auction in The Hague in 1881, for only two guilders with a thirty cents buyer's premium (around €24 at current purchasing power). At the time, it was in poor condition. Des Tombe had no heirs and donated this and other paintings to the Mauritshuis in 1902.

The painting was exhibited as part of a Vermeer show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1965 and 1966. In 2012, as part of a traveling exhibition while the Mauritshuis was being renovated and expanded, the painting was exhibited in Japan at the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, and in 2013–2014 the United States, where it was shown at the High Museum in Atlanta, the de Young Museum in San Francisco and in New York City at the Frick Collection. Later in 2014 it was exhibited in Bologna, Italy. In June 2014, it returned to the Mauritshuis museum which stated that the painting would not leave the museum in the future.

The painting was investigated by the scientists of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage and FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) Amsterdam.

The ground is dense and yellowish in color and is composed of chalk, lead white, ochre and very little black. The dark background of the painting contains bone black, weld (luteolin, reseda luteola), chalk, small amounts of red ochre, and indigo. The face and draperies were painted mainly using ochres, natural ultramarine, bone black, charcoal black and lead white.

In February-March 2018 an international team of art experts spent two weeks studying the painting in a specially constructed glass workshop in the museum, open to observation by the public. The non-invasive research project included removing the work from its frame for study with microscopes, X-ray equipment and a special scanner to learn more about the methods and materials used by Vermeer.

The painting has gone under a number of titles in various countries over the centuries. Originally it may have been one of the two tronies "painted in the Turkish fashion" (Twee tronijnen geschildert op sijn Turx) recorded in the inventory at the time of Vermeer’s death. It may later have been the work appearing in the catalogue to a 1696 sale of painting in Amsterdam, where it is described as a "Portrait in Antique Costume, uncommonly artistic" (Een Tronie in Antique Klederen, ongemeen konstig).

After the bequest to the Mauritshuis, the painting became known as Girl with a Turban (Meisje met tulband) and it was noted of its original description in the 1675 inventory that the turban had become a fashion accessory of some fascination during the period of European wars against the Turks. By 1995, the title Girl with a Pearl (Meisje met de parel) was considered more appropriate. Pearls, in fact, figure in 21 of Vermeer's pictures, including very prominently in Woman with a Pearl Necklace. Earrings alone are also featured in A Lady Writing a Letter, Study of a Young Woman, Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute. Similarly shaped ear-pieces were used as convincing accessories in 20th-century fakes that were briefly attributed to Vermeer, such as Young Woman with a Blue Hat, Smiling Girl and The Lace Maker.

Generally the English title of the painting was simply Head of a Young Girl, although it was sometimes known as The Pearl. One critic explained that this name was given, not just from the detail of the earring, but because the figure glows with an inner radiance against the dark background.

Jovem com uma Jarra de Água (Woman with a Water Jug or Young Woman with a Water Pitcher) - Johannes Vermeer

Jovem com uma Jarra de Água (Woman with a Water Jug or Young Woman with a Water Pitcher) - Johannes Vermeer

Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Nova York, Estados Unidos

OST - 45x40 - Aproximadamente 1662-1665

Woman with a Water Jug, also known as Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, is a painting finished between 1660–1662 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in the Baroque style. It is oil on canvas, 45.7cm x 40.6 cm, and is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A young woman is found in the center of the picture. She is opening a window with her right hand, while she holds a water jug with her left hand. This jug rests on a larger platter. Both of these, among other objects, are upon on a table. This is decorated with a predominantly red rug of Asian origin. Behind the table stands a chair upon which lies a blue material. The woman gazes out the window. The clothing of the woman consists of a dark blue dress with a black and gold bodice. A white cloth serves as her headpiece. A map hangs in the background on the wall.

This painting is one of a closely related group painted in the early to mid-1660s as the artist was not using linear perspective and geometric order, and the light was his only source of emphasis. The work suggests that Vermeer was aware that light is composed of colours, and the effect of colours on one another. For instance, the blue drape is reflected as dark blue on the side of the metallic pitcher, and the red fabric modifies the gold hue of the basin's underside.

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher was purchased by Henry Gurdon Marquand in 1887 at a Paris gallery for $800. When Marquand brought it to the United States, it was the first Vermeer in America. Marquand donated the artwork along with other pieces in his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

A Leiteira (De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje) - Johannes Vermeer

                                                       
A Leiteira (De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje) - Johannes Vermeer
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdã, Holanda
OST - 45x41 - Aproximadamente 1660



A Leiteira (De Melkmeid ou Het Melkmeisje) é uma pintura em óleo sobre tela que representa uma "leiteira", de fato uma empregada de cozinha, feito pelo artista Johannes Vermeer. Está atualmente no Rijksmuseum em Amsterdã, Países Baixos, que o qualifica como "inquestionavelmente uma das maiores atrações do museu”.
O ano exato em que a pintura foi acabada é desconhecido, com estimativas a variar segundo a fonte. O Rijksmuseum estima que tenha sido concluído por volta de 1658. De acordo com o Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nova Iorque, foi pintado por volta de 1657 ou 1658. O site "Essential Vermeer" dá um intervalo maior, entre 1658 e 1661.
The painting shows a milkmaid, a woman who milks cows and makes dairy products like butter and cheese, in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container on a table. Milkmaids began working solely in the stables before large houses hired them to do housework as well rather than hiring out for more staff. Also on the table in front of the milkmaid are various types of bread. She is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms. A foot warmer is on the floor behind her, near Delft wall tiles depicting Cupid (to the viewer's left) and a figure with a pole (to the right). Intense light streams from the window on the left side of the canvas.
The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. "The light, though bright, doesn't wash out the rough texture of the bread crusts or flatten the volumes of the maid's thick waist and rounded shoulders", wrote Karen Rosenberg, an art critic for The New York Times. Yet with half of the woman's face in shadow, it is "impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration," she wrote.
"It's a little bit of a Mona Lisa effect" in modern viewers' reactions to the painting, according to Walter Liedtke, curator of the department of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and organizer of two Vermeer exhibits. "There's a bit of mystery about her for modern audiences. She is going about her daily task, faintly smiling. And our reaction is 'What is she thinking?'
The woman would have been known as a "kitchen maid" or maid-of-all-work rather than a specialised "milkmaid" at the time the painting was created: "milk maids" were women who milked cows; kitchen maids worked in kitchens. For at least two centuries before the painting was created, milkmaids and kitchen maids had a reputation as being predisposed to love or sex, and this was frequently reflected in Dutch paintings of kitchen and market scenes from Antwerp, Utrecht and Delft. Some of the paintings were slyly suggestive, like The Milkmaid, others more coarsely so.
The leading artists in this tradition were the Antwerp painters Joachim Beuckelaer (c. 1535–1575) and Frans Snyders (1579–1657), who had many followers and imitators, as well as Pieter Aertsen (who, like Beukelaer, had clients in Delft), the Utrecht Mannerist painter Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638), and his son, Peter Wtewael (1596–1660). Closer to Vermeer's day, Nicolaes Maes painted several comic pictures now given titles such as The Lazy Servant. However by this time there was an alternative convention of painting women at work in the home as exemplars of Dutch domestic virtue, dealt with at length by Simon Schama.
In Dutch literature and paintings of Vermeer's time, maids were often depicted as subjects of male desire—dangerous women threatening the honor and security of the home, the center of Dutch life—although some Vermeer contemporaries, such as Pieter de Hooch, had started to represent them in a more neutral way, as did Michael Sweerts. Vermeer's painting is one of the rare examples of a maid treated in an empathetic and dignified way, although amorous symbols in this work still exemplify the tradition.
Other painters in this tradition, such as Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), depicted attractive maids with symbolic objects such as jugs and various forms of game and produce. "In almost all the works of this tradition there is an erotic element, which is conveyed through gestures ranging from jamming chickens onto spits to gently offering — or so the direction of view suggests — an intimate glimpse of some vaguely uterine object," according to Liedtke. In Dou's 1646 painting, Girl Chopping Onions (now in the British Royal Collection), a pewter tankard may refer to both male and female anatomy, and the picture contains other contemporary symbols of lust, such as onions (said to have aphrodisical properties), and a dangling bird. Milk also had lewd connotations, from the slang term melken, defined as "to sexually attract or lure" (a meaning that may have originated from watching farm girls working under cows, according to Liedtke). Examples of works using milk this way include Lucas van Leyden's engraving The Milkmaid (1510) and Jacques de Gheyn II's engraving The Archer and the Milkmaid (about 1610).
Vermeer's painting is even more understated, although the use of symbols remains: one of the Delft tiles at the foot of the wall behind the maid, near the foot warmer, depicts Cupid – which can imply arousal of a woman or simply that while she is working she is daydreaming about a man. Other amorous symbols in the painting include a wide-mouthed jug, often used as a symbol of the female anatomy. The foot warmer was often used by artists as a symbol for female sexual arousal because, when placed under a skirt, it heats the whole body below the waist, according to Liedtke. The coals enclosed inside the foot warmer could symbolize "either the heat of lust in tavern or brothel scenes, or the hidden but true burning passion of a woman for her husband", according to Serena Cant, a British art historian and lecturer. Yet the whitewashed wall and presence of milk seem to indicate that the room was a "cool kitchen" used for cooking with dairy products, such as milk and butter, so the foot warmer would have a pragmatic purpose there. Since other Dutch paintings of the period indicate that foot warmers were used when seated, its presence in the picture may symbolize the standing woman's "hardworking nature", according to Cant.
The painting is part of a social context of the sexual or romantic interactions of maids and men of higher social ranks that has now disappeared in Europe and never commonly recognized in America, according to Liedtke, who offers as an example Vermeer's contemporary, Samuel Pepys, whose diary records encounters with kitchen maids, oyster girls and, at an inn during a 1660 visit to Delft, with "an exceedingly pretty lass and right for the sport". The painting was first owned by (and may have been painted for) Pieter van Ruijven, owner of several other paintings by Vermeer which also depicted attractive young women and with themes of desire and self-denial quite different from the attitude of Pepys and many of the paintings in the Dutch "kitchenmaid" tradition.
In Dutch, Het Melkmeisje is the painting's most-used name. Although this title is less accurate in modern Dutch, the word "meid" (maid) has gained a negative tone that is not present in its diminutive form ("meisje")—hence the use of the more friendly title for the work, used by the Rijksmuseum and others.
According to art historian Harry Rand, the painting suggests the woman is making bread pudding, which would account for the milk and the broken pieces of bread on the table. Rand assumed she would have already made custard in which the bread mixed with egg would be soaking at the moment depicted in the painting. She pours milk into the Dutch oven to cover the mixture because otherwise the bread, if not simmering in liquid while it is baking, will become an unappetizing, dry crust instead of forming the typical upper surface of the pudding. She is careful in pouring the trickle of milk because bread pudding can be ruined when the ingredients are not accurately measured or properly combined.
By depicting the working maid in the act of careful cooking, the artist presents not just a picture of an everyday scene, but one with ethical and social value. The humble woman is using common ingredients and otherwise useless stale bread to create a pleasurable product for the household. "Her measured demeanor, modest dress and judiciousness in preparing her food conveys eloquently yet unobtrusively one of the strongest values of 17th-century Netherlands, domestic virtue", according to the Essential Vermeer website.
"In the end, it is not the allusions to female sexuality that give this painting its romance or emotional resonance — it is the depiction of honest, hard work as something romantic in and of itself," Raquel Laneri wrote in Forbes magazine. "The Milkmaid elevates the drudgery of housework and servitude to virtuous, even heroic, levels."
An impression of monumentality and "perhaps a sense of dignity" is lent to the image by the artist's choice of a relatively low vantage point and a pyramidal building up of forms from the left foreground to the woman's head, according to a web page of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to the Rijksmuseum, the painting "is built up along two diagonal lines. They meet by the woman's right wrist." This focuses the attention of the viewer on the pouring of the milk.
The photograph-like realism of the painting resembles that of Leiden artists such as Dou, Frans van Mieris, and Gabriël Metsu. Vermeer, who was age twenty-five when he painted this work, was "shopping around in Dutch art for different styles and subjects", according to Liedtke. "He's looking, in this case, mainly at artists like Gerrit Dou and others who work in a meticulous, illusionistic way." Liedtke sees the work as either Vermeer's "last early work or first mature work". The curator added, "I almost think he had to explore what you might call 'tactile illusionism' to understand where he really wanted to go, which was in the more optical, light-filled direction."
Characteristic of Delft artistry and of Vermeer's work, the painting also has a "classic balance" of figurative elements and an "extraordinary treatment of light", according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The wall on the left, according to Liedtke, "gets you very quickly in the picture—that recession from the left and then the openness to the right—and this sort of left-corner scheme was used for about 10 years before Vermeer, and he was very quick to pick up the latest thing."
"Nowhere else in his oeuvre does one find such a sculptural figure and such seemingly tangible objects, and yet the future painter of luminous interiors has already arrived," according to the museum. The "pointillé pattern of bright dots on the bread and basket" are the "most effusive" use of that scheme in any Vermeer painting, and it appears to be used to suggest "scintillating daylight and rough textures at the same time."
Vermeer painted over two items originally in the painting. One was a large wall map (a Rijksmuseum web page calls it a painting) behind the upper part of the woman's body. (A wall map may not have been very out of place in a humble workroom such as the cold kitchen where the maid toiled: large maps in 17th-century Holland were inexpensive ways of decorating bare walls.) He originally placed a large, conspicuous clothes basket (the Rijksmuseum web page calls it a "sewing basket") near the bottom of the painting, behind the maid's red skirt, but then the artist painted it over, producing the slight shift in tone (pentimento) on the wall behind the foot warmer. The basket was later discovered with an X-ray. Other Vermeer paintings also have images removed. Some art critics have thought the removals may have been intended to provide the works with better thematic focus.
"[I]ts rustic immediacy differs from Vermeer's later paintings," according to Laneri. "There is a tactile, visceral quality to The Milkmaid — you can almost taste the thick, creamy milk escaping the jug, feel the cool dampness of the room and the starchy linen of the maid's white cap, touch her sculptural shoulders and corseted waist. She is not an apparition or abstraction. She is not the ideal, worldly housewife of Vermeer's later Young Woman with a Water Pitcher or the ethereal beauty in Girl with a Pearl Earring. She is not the cartoonish buxom vixen in Leyden's drawing. She is real — as real as a painting can get anyway."
This painting has "perhaps, the most brilliant color scheme of his oeuvre", according to the Essential Vermeer website. Already in the 18th century, English painter and critic Joshua Reynolds praised the work for its striking quality One of the distinctions of Vermeer's palette, compared with his contemporaries, was his preference for the expensive natural ultramarine (made from crushed lapis lazuli) where other painters typically used the much cheaper azurite. Along with the ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow is also a dominant color in an exceptionally luminous work (with a much less somber and conventional rendering of light than any of Vermeer's previous extant works). Depicting white walls was a challenge for artists in Vermeer's time, with his contemporaries using various forms of gray pigment. Here the white walls reflect the daylight with different intensities, displaying the effects of uneven textures on the plastered surfaces. The artist here used white lead, umber and charcoal black. Although the formula was widely known among Vermeer's contemporary genre painters, "perhaps no artist more than Vermeer was able to use it so effectively", according to the Essential Vermeer website.
The woman's coarse features are painted with thick dabs of impasto. The seeds on the crust of the bread, as well as the crust itself, along with the plaited handles of the bread basket, are rendered with pointillé dots. Soft parts of the bread are rendered with thin swirls of paint, with dabs of ochre used to show the rough edges of broken crust. One piece of bread to the viewer's right and close to the Dutch oven, has a broad band of yellow, different from the crust, which Cant believes is a suggestion that the piece is going stale. The small roll at the far right has thick impastoed dots that resemble a knobbly crust or a crust with seeds on it. The bread and basket, despite being closer to the viewer, are painted in a more diffuse way than the illusionistic realism of the wall, with its stains, shadowing, nail and nail hole, or the seams and fastenings of the woman's dress, the gleaming, polished brass container hanging from the wall. The panes of glass in the window are varied in a very realistic way, with a crack in one (fourth row from the bottom, far right) reflected on the wood of the window frame. Just below that pane, another has a scratch, indicated with a thin white line. Another pane (second row from the bottom, second from right) is pushed inward within its frame.
The discrepancy between objects at various distances from the viewer may indicate Vermeer used a camera obscura, according to Cant. Liedtke points out that a pinhole discovered in the canvas "has really punctured the theory of the camera obscura [...] The idea that Vermeer traced compositions in an optical device [...] is rather naive when you consider that the light lasts maybe 10 seconds, but the painting took at least months to paint." Instead, The pin in the canvas would have been tied to a string with chalk on it, which the painter would have snapped to get perspective lines, Liedtke said in a 2009 interview.
The woman's bulky green oversleeves were painted with the same yellow and blue paint used in the rest of the woman's clothing, worked at the same time in a wet-on-wet method. Broad strokes in the painting of the clothing suggests coarse, thick texture of the work clothing. The blue cuff uses a lighter mixture of ultramarine and lead-white, together with a layer of ochre painted beneath it. The brilliant blue of the skirt or apron has been intensified with a glaze (a thin, transparent top layer) of the same color. The glazing helps suggest that the blue material is a less coarse fabric than the yellow bodice, according to Cant.
Pieter van Ruijven (1624–1674), Vermeer's patron in Delft (and, at his death, the owner of twenty-one of the painter's works), probably bought the painting directly from the artist. Liedtke doubts that the patron ordered the subject matter. Ownership later passed on, perhaps to his widow, Maria de Knuijt, probably their daughter, Magdelene van Ruijven (1655–1681), and certainly to Van Ruijven's son-in-law, Jacob Dissius (1653–1695), whose estate sold it with other paintings by the artist in 1696. Records of that sale described The Milkmaid as "exceptionally good", and the work brought the second-highest price in the sale (175 guilders, exceeded only by the 200 guilders paid for Vermeer's cityscape, View of Delft.).
In 1765 the painting was auctioned by Leendert Pieter de Neufville. "The famous milkmaid, by Vermeer of Delft, artful", went through at least five Amsterdam collections before it became part of what The Metropolitan Museum of Art called "one of the great collectors of Dutch art", that of Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785–1845). In 1822 she married into the Six family of collectors, and in 1908 her two sons sold the painting (as part of the famous Six collection of thirty-nine works) to the Rijksmuseum, which acquired the works with support from the Dutch government and the Rembrandt Society — but not before a good deal of public squabbling and the intervention of the States-General or Dutch parliament.
The painting has been exhibited in western Europe and in the United States. In 1872 it was part of an Amsterdam exhibition of "old masters" ("Tentoonstelling van zeldzame en belangrijke schilderijen van oude meesters"), for Arti et Amicitiae, a society of visual artists and art lovers, and in 1900 it was part of an exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Other European exhibits showing the work include the Royal Academy of Arts ("Exhibition of Dutch Art", London) in 1929; Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume ("Exposition hollandaise: Tableaux, aquarelles et dessíns anciens et modernes", Paris) in 1921; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen ("Vermeer, oorsprong en invloed: Fabritius, De Hooch, De Witte", Rotterdam) in 1935.
It was exhibited at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, and the outbreak of World War II during the fair – with the German occupation of the Netherlands – caused the work to remain in the U.S. until Holland was liberated. During this time it was displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (the museum where the curator of the World's Fair exhibit was working), and was included in that museum's exhibition catalogues in 1939 and 1941. During the war, the work was also displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it was hanging as late as 1944, according to Leidtke. In 1953, the Kunsthaus Zürich displayed the painting in an exhibition, and the next year it traveled 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 the Mauritshuis in the Hague and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. In 1999 and 2000 the painting was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington for its 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 (it did not appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art venue of that exhibition, earlier that year).
The painting returned to New York in 2009, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage (Amsterdam to Manhattan), where it was the central feature of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, alongside several of the museum's five Vermeer works and other Dutch Golden Age paintings.
The painting was exhibited online in a high-quality digital version after museum curators found that many people thought that a low-quality yellowed version of the image which was circulating on the Internet was a good reproduction of the image.