Illustrated Feature: Vermeer’s Style
The Milkmaid: Vermeer’s Expedition into Finding His Style
Justin Koyithara
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Never have I gone to a museum where the architectural grandiosity of the museum matched the beauty of the exhibits inside of it. This past Sunday I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically the special exhibition called “Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid,” which was lent here from Amsterdam. During his time, Johannes Vermeer wasn’t very well known as a painter, but today is one of the most famous Dutch Baroque painters. His fame now is due to his masterpiece, The Milkmaid, even though he wasn’t very well known during his time because of the small number of works that he actually produced. The guide, Tom Campbell, along with curator, Walter Liedtke, and conservator, Dorothy Mahon, use The Milkmaid and other works of Vermeer to show how his style changed overtime because of the influence of different artists.
The Milkmaid is a painting of a kitchen maid pouring milk next to a window with bread on the table in front of her, a normal everyday scene. Campbell describes how wonderful Vermeer’s Milkmaid, which he made around 1657, is because of his use of intense illusionism, use of light and shadow, and use of textures. This was his greatest work of art because of the change in style it showed from his earlier works. Vermeer didn’t have the opportunity to work under any artists during his early years, so he learned different styles after seeing it done by other painters. Because of this, the style he uses in his first six paintings varies tremendously and is experimental in his quest to find the style that represents him.
An artist at the time who inspired Vermeer was Gabriel Metsu who painted, A Woman Seated at a Window, around 1660, which changed Vermeer’s style by teaching him to soften contours and describe daylight very naturally. The way Metsu used the light to make the picture more realistic can also be seen in Vermeer’s intense illusionism in The Milkmaid. During the Baroque period of art, facial expressions and emotions were a major theme by many artists as a way of capturing the moment. The painting that influenced the emotions and expressions of Vermeer’s subjects was A Young Woman at her Toilet with her Maid by Gerard ter Borch in 1650. The painting is about a young woman admiring herself in a mirror, but it shows intense facial emotion from the woman and her maid, which are seen in Vermeer’s later works as well. Vermeer was influenced by these other Dutch painters but only used them as a guideline since he often added his own part to the style and made it better than before. This is witnessed when comparing his work to Nicolaes Maes’ Young Woman Peeling Apples from around 1655. Maes utilizes light and shadows to bring the viewer’s attention to the woman, which Vermeer also uses in A Maid Asleep (1656). The difference is that Vermeer also uses two streaks of light, which shine on the door jams, a detail that he didn’t learn from anyone.
The Milkmaid uses all of these styles that he learned from other artists in order to make his painting better. Vermeer’s masterpiece transitions from light to dark as seen on the rear wall, a technique he picked up to highlight the subject and portray depth. The depth of the painting is perhaps what makes it stand out the most. The illusionism is very realistic because of the shadows cast by all the objects and all the different textures that can be seen like those of the maid’s dress and the stale bread. Everything that his predecessors did, Vermeer studied, improved, and used in his future artworks.
Being educated about artwork versus analyzing a piece of art one views on one’ own are two very different experiences. An individual does not get to fully appreciate the dedication and time that an artist put into his work by looking at a picture. By looking at the actual piece of work in person one can visualize the small intricate details that pictures don’t exhibit. Seeing The Milkmaid and other pieces of Johannes Vermeer’s work at the Metropolitan Museum also takes one to a new level of illusionism where one find them self wondering if they are looking at paintings or photographs. Although an individual may only get to see each painting for a short period of time it is an experience that is definitely worth it to see how art has evolved over hundreds of years.
