Pyeongye
01Where you've seen it
Walk down the dairy aisle of a French supermarket and you'll find Nestlé's La Laitière yogurt. The name means the milkmaid, and Vermeer's painting The Milkmaid serves as the face of the brand on the packaging.
In 1999 a novel spun a story out of another of his paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and in 2003 it became a movie starring Scarlett Johansson. One painting became a novel, then a film. Another became a yogurt pot.
02The real story
Pyeongye has his Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. He painted it in Delft around 1662, and it is small, about 46 centimeters tall. With one hand the woman opens a window. With the other she holds a pitcher resting in a basin.
Light from the window on the left touches her white headcloth, the golden pitcher, and the red tablecloth, one after another. Vermeer lived and worked in Delft all his life, and fewer than forty paintings are accepted as his today. Maybe that is why each one gets borrowed for so long.