Rijksmuseum Amsterdam - Collections of the Rijksmuseum, the Milkmaid, Night Watch, Battle of Gibraltar, the Jewish Bride, the Little Street (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Collections of the Rijksmuseum, the Milkmaid, Night Watch, Battle of Gibraltar, the Jewish Bride, the Little Street, the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the Love Letter, Portrait of Daniele Barbaro, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Memorial Tablet for the Lords of Montfoort, the Sampling Officials. Excerpt: The Milkmaid (De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje), sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which esteems it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions". The exact year of the painting's completion is unknown, with estimates varying by source. The Rijksmuseum estimates it as circa 1658. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it was painted in about 1657 or 1658. The "Essential Vermeer" website gives a broader range of 16581661. Despite its traditional title, the picture clearly shows a kitchen or housemaid (a low-ranking servant) in a plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container (now commonly known as a "Dutch oven") on a table. Also on the table are various types of bread. A foot warmer is on the floor behind her, near Delft wall tiles depicting Cupid (to the viewer's left) and a figure with a pole (to the right). Light enters the room through a sash window to the left. A foot warmer sits on the floor behind the maid, a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from her thick forearms. The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. "The light, though bright, doesn't wash out the rough texture of... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=3282511