Let's keep it wild.: The milkmaid, after

21 June 2014

The milkmaid, after

The Milkmaid is a painting made circa 1658 by the artist Johannes Vermeer.

The masterwork is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. 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. The attention of the viewer is on the pouring of the milk.

– Wikipedia: Compositional strategy {link}

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. She is not the cartoonish buxom vixen in Lucas van Leyden's drawing. She is real — as real as a painting can get anyway.

– Raquel Laneri {link}