The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer

The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas c. 1658, depicts a domestic kitchen maid pouring milk from a jug in one of the artist’s most accomplished compositions of light and subtle, contrasting colours, and enigmatic portrayal of the human figure. Before the maid is a still life of different types of bread with a blue tablecloth. Natural light plays over the interior and reflects off figure and objects. The dazzling blues show Vermeer’s lavish use of expensive pigments such as natural ultramarine, lapis lazuli. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and colour across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.