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.
