Vermeer's Milkmaid in the Discourse of Love

CHAPTER 10 Vermeer’s Milkmaid in the Discourse of Love

H. Rodney Nevitt, Jr.

Some years ago in Amsterdam I purchased a seventeenth-century Dutch tile decorated with a figure of Cupid holding his bow and arrow [Fig. 10.1]. It re- minded me of the well-known Cupid tile in Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid of ca. 1657–1658, visible between the milkmaid’s skirt and the foot warmer [Figs. 10.2 & 10.3]. The Cupids are posed similarly, though my Cupid has his left foot forward, and Vermeer’s, his right.1 Of the two tiles to the right of the foot warmer, the first depicts a man with a walking stick, while the one at the right edge of the picture seems illegible; of the three, Cupid is most emphatically in focus. Cupids appear in other paintings by Vermeer, for example his Lady Standing at the Virginal of ca. 1670–1672, which includes the framed painting of Cupid on the wall and a tile of Cupid fishing (a metaphor for amorous pur- suit) to the left of her skirt [Fig. 10.4].2 Here the multiple Cupid references, the

* I was delighted when Walter Liedtke asked if he could borrow my tile, discussed here, for the exhibition of The Milkmaid at the Metropolitan Museum in 2009. I had met Walter when I was a fellow at the Met, and he became aware of the tile when I published it in Nevitt, Jr. H.R., “Vermeer on the Question of Love”, in Franits W. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer (Cambridge: 2001) 101, fig. 42. The subject of Vermeer also reminds me of my time as an intern at the National Gallery, under the benevolent supervision of Arthur Wheelock. My approach to The Milkmaid draws insights from both of my Vermeer mentors, and so I dedi- cate this essay in memory of Walter Liedtke, and with much gratitude to Arthur Wheelock. I began concerted research on The Milkmaid in 2004 while on a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and continued it in fall 2013 during a Faculty Development Leave from the University of Houston; I am grateful to both institutions for their support. I would also like to thank Walter Melion, Joanna Woodall, and Michael Zell for inviting me to participate in the Lovis Corinth Colloquium at Emory. 1 My Cupid and Vermeer’s are perhaps related to each other in some highly indirect way. In Liedtke W., The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer [exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York] (New York: 2009) 14, fig. 15, my tile is described as ‘late 17th century’. I fondly prefer ‘17th century’ to leave open the possibility that it was the tile. 2 On Cupids and Vermeer, see Nevitt, Jr. H.R., “Vermeer on the Question of Love” 97–103, and for more on love and fishing, see idem, “Rembrandt’s Hidden Lovers”, in Falkenburg R. et al. (eds.), Natuur en landschap in de Nederlandse kunst 1500–1800, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48 (1997) 167–170.

Figure 10.1 Blue and White Delft Tile with Cupid, seventeenth century. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. H. Rodney Nevitt, Jr. Image © Mr. And Mrs. H. Rodney Nevitt, Jr. Photo: Joseph Lazzaro. elegant lady—a Petrarchan object of desire—the musical theme, the pastoral landscapes, the implied scenario in which she seems to wait for an admirer to take the chair before her: all this defines the erotic ambience. But what kind of love is at issue in The Milkmaid? The question really began, for me, with my tile. The Cupid tile in The Milkmaid has been related to the adjacent foot warmer (‘stoof’ or ‘stoofje’ in Dutch), the wooden box with its earthenware bowl in which hot coals might be placed on a cold winter’s day. Such foot warmers are used by a variety of women (and it is almost always women) in Dutch paintings: a tipsy housewife by Jan Steen, a nursing mother by Pieter de Hooch, even