Alexandra Peers takes to the Daily Beast to drum up a little titillation around the Met’s exhibit of several Vermeers, including this picture of a milkmaid:
Walter Liedtke, the curator of its Vermeer’s Masterpiece: The Milkmaid exhibition, says the painting, long interpreted as a salute to the working classes, is actually a kind of discreet 17th-century paean to voyeurism, desire and sex. One highlight of the controversial new spin: The milkmaid’s famous open milk jug, according to the Met, is representative of “a portion of the female anatomy.” […] And what’s Liedtke’s evidence for such a claim? A naked Cupid on one of the Delft tiles and, more tellingly, a foot-warmer in the lower right-hand corner of the painting, he says. Seems simple to us, Liedtke offers, but in the iconography of the day, the item was sexual. “The mistress of the house would put her feet up. It heats everything under the skirt.”
Vermeer’s Naughty Milkmaid (The Daily Beast)
