THE

MILKMAID

Laura Coomonte Cano

What’s ‘The Milkmaid’?• The milkmaid is an oil-on-canvas picture that was painted by

the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. In the painting we can see a milkmaid dressed in puritanical form (a women who milked cows in that epoch) situated in a modest kitchen with a table in which there are many types of bread and a container. In the wall there is a basket of wicker. In the foot warmer were painted tiles of Cupid. Now, the painting is in the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam.

Characteristics• In this painting we must understand two different and

contradictories concepts that Vermeer has shown; a sensation of monumentality and a big calm.

• It was painted in 1858 and it’s very ilusionistic. It has been painted really meticulously and it shows a big contrast between the light of the floor and the light of the wall.

What about the painter?• Johannes Vermeer was born in Netherlands in 1632 and he

lived in the city of Delft. He lived exclusively of the painting and he had economic difficulties because he didn’t painted a lof of paintings and he spent a lot of time for to paint a picture. At the age of twenty he married Catharina Bolenes (he was protestant and his wife was catholic) and they had fifteen children. During his life he didn’t have too much success and he painted realistic pictures and scenes of the cotidian life, in special paintings of women.

• He died in 15 December of 1675.

Another works of art…

Official and laughing girl The girl with the wine glass

Why is he important?

• He’s principally know by the treatment of the light, he never used the grey colour for the shades. He used a dark chamber to paint his pictures.

• Lots of his paintings had been painted with grey, yellow and blue which were his favourite mix. Geometry was very important in his work, he painted mostly domestic interior scenes. He is one of the best painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

My opinion

• Although I haven’t seen any picture of him, I think that it’s a great painter, and his work it’s more interesting than other more famous painters of that age. In my opinion we should see some of his paintings like the girl with a pearl earring and the milkmaid.

• This picture is really beautiful because it shows something very simple (a milkmaid in a kitchen) but it results striking!