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Hello. I'm Walter Liedtke, Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And we're _______ _____ the exhibition, "Vermeer's Masterpiece The Milkmaid,"
which will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum from September 10 through November 29, 2009.
If you ____ __ to any person in the Netherlands and say, even in English, "The Milkmaid," or in Dutch, "Melkmeisje,"
they will immediately think of this image, this picture by Vermeer.
The Milkmaid is a fairly early work by Vermeer
and it should be said right away that there's only thirty-six paintings by Vermeer.
And in the Metropolitan Museum we're blessed to have five of them, ____ ____ any other institution.
We have a painting that probably immediately precedes it,
and that's “A Maid Asleep” of about 1656 or '7.
And that is probably Vermeer's _____ painting of the subject that's so typical for him:
a young, attractive woman in a private domestic interior.
Both pictures represent domestic servants,
and ____ of ____ were acquired by a single patron who ______ about half of everything that Vermeer did in the
in the span of some twenty years.
His name was Pieter van Ruijven. He was a minor nobleman
and we know that __ 1657 he lends to Vermeer and his young wife five hundred guilders
which is a very unusual thing for a nobleman __ __ with a young artist-
and it's almost certain that what that really was was an advance on
pictures to get Vermeer started, give him a little funding.
This is an extraordinary circumstance where Vermeer can actually ____ __ the owner of the pictures, the
direct buyer.
Most Dutch painters
worked ___ an open market and their paintings were ____ through middlemen to people they never knew.
But most of Vermeer's work ____ __ somebody that he knew very well.
And Vermeer could be much ____ suggestive, subtle in his meanings ____ the average Dutch painter.
And this is what we see in Vermeer.
And all of this is so much ____ suggestive and psychological ____ the average Dutch picture would be.
Similarly The Milkmaid looks like and is
an earthy young woman
who is pouring milk from a pitcher
into a bowl on a table. And __ ___ table is an extraordinary amount of bread.
So the woman's _____ something quite practical,
but she __ smiling subtly.
And then to the lower right of this figure we see a row of tiles at the baseboard of the rear wall ______ her.
And right ____ __ her is this figure of Cupid, with his bow held out in front of him.
And to the other side of a foot warmer __ the floor
is the image of a standing man with a walking stick and what appears __ __ a backpack
And there's this _____ blue-and-white tile.
So there's this juxtaposition of a milkmaid,
a Cupid, and the figure of a wandering man, it seems.
And between them the foot-warmer, which consists of a
pot of hot coals shoved into a wooden box that's perforated on the top so you can rest your feet on it.
And this was a very common symbol of amorous ________ in women.
There are many Dutch paintings of amorous subjects in which a foot warmer occurs.
And all of that suggests that romance __ __ the air for the milkmaid.
Now when you ____ __ the painting by Vermeer,
he's really approaching young ladies in romantic situations
with a lot of _______ for how they feel about it
and how _____ expressions and body languages are affected by that.
It's ___________ that a painting that was made for a very sophisticated private collector,
treating a common _____ but in an unusual and very sophisticated way
is now ____ _ popular work, probably the single
most famous painting in the Netherlands _____ The Night Watch by Rembrandt.