Shop art print and framed art The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer

The Dairymaid (Het melkmeisje or De melkmeid in Dutch) is an oil painting on canvas measuring 45.5 × 41 cm, produced around 1658 by Johannes Vermeer, known as "Vermeer of Delft", and exhibited since 1908 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The work is one of Vermeer's most famous, and indeed one of the most famous in the history of painting - its use for commercial purposes is no doubt one of the reasons why it is so popular in France. The only painting by Vermeer in which the main subject is a woman of humble circumstances (he treated the female subject from other angles, notably in The Young Girl with a Pearl), this genre scene suggests the calm and tranquillity of domestic chores in the healthy, peaceful atmosphere of a corner of a room. Soft light divides the space between areas of shadow and light, illuminating the still life of the table in the foreground, in particular the bread in the basket, studded with small touches of light. The generously-shaped milkmaid is absorbed in her feeding activity, watching, as the viewer does, the thin trickle of milk dripping from her jug into a dish, an instantaneous image fixed in eternity by the painter's brush. No one can really know what the woman is thinking, and the painting's fascination may lie precisely in the fact that it resists scholarly discourse, remaining open to personal investment on the part of the viewer. As Ernst Gombrich points out in his History of Art : - Ernst Hans Gombrich, History of Art, p. 433." A woman, [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the baroque style.

 

« The Milkmaid » is kept at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 

Find the full description of The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer on Wikipedia.