Selected Palettes: A White-Washed Wall

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orking over a dry monochrome underpainting 17th c. painters completed their compositions one piece at a time fixing both the final forms and the general lighting scheme of the picture. Each passage had an individual character especially as to transparency, surface texture and thickness of paint due to the individual character and limitations of each pigment. Each day the artist had to set out a specific palette according to the passage he wished to execute. In a 17th. c manuscript the following exchange regarding the day's palette is reported by two apprentices.

Silvio: "Tell me, if you will, whether you set the masters' palette?"
F.: "Surely (...) it suffices for him to tell me what he intends to paint for then I know which colors I must place on the palette."

Most representations of artists' palettes at work show very small palettes with only a few pigments on them. Painting procedures had become so highly organized by the 17th c. that there existed a number of fixed recipes for almost every element to be represented and for a variety of flesh tones found in nature. Most of these recipes were passed from one artist's studio to another and rapidly became common knowledge throughout Europe. Vermeer, no doubt, set out each morning his palette according to the passage that he would work on during the day. One of these particular palettes and is described below.

A White Washed Wall

Perhaps of all the various elements portrayed in Vermeer's paintings, the simple white-washed wall which appears in so many of his interiors is that one most taken for granted. Instead, these humble walls illuminated by daylight of different intensities present one of the most challenging pictorial problems in Vermeer's oeuvre. When similar representations of walls by his contemporaries are compared to Vermeer's, one cannot help but notice the various tones of gray pigment used. Instead, in Vermeer's renderings, these same or similar tones, appear inseparable from the play of light as it rakes across the uneven plastered surface.

One of the most successful examples of a white-washed wall is certainly to be found in the early Milkmaid. Surprisingly, the palette Vermeer employed was simple as it is effective: white lead, umber and charcoal black. This formula for painting white objects in their various light conditions was widely known but among contemporary genre painters perhaps no artist more than Vermeer was able to use it so effectively.

Although it is very difficult to understand what criteria was used to decide the sequence of areas to be completed during the working-up, or finishing phase, one would imagine that Vermeer painted the background wall at the very early stages since it plays such a basic role in the artist's pictorial conception. More than any other elements, it is the character of the wall which determines the amount, the direction and quality of light which will be represented in a given painting. Afterwards, both color and lighting of each object could be accurately gauged against the tone of the wall. Analogously, landscape painters often depict the sky first since it is obvious that the sky influences the general tone of the landscape, the color and disposition of the illuminated areas and not vice versa.

A Day's Work

Vermeer began his painting session by placing on his palette a rather large quantity of lead white and two smaller ones of umber and charcoal black. The most strongly illuminated area of the wall was laid in carefully with a heavy layer of pure or nearly pure white lead. This thick layer of opaque paint (impasto) covered the light gray ground which was part of the underpainting. A mixture of umber and black lightened with white lead was then laid in the area to the left of the standing milkmaid. Umber prevails over black since too much black tends to produce a sullen gray without depth and creates the unnatural effect akin to a black and white photograph. Umber lends the mixture a delicate olive green tone which would later vibrate against the warm tones of the red earthenware and the yellow bodice worn by the maid.

During a working day, the paints which Vermeer used remained wet. He could model and blend adjacent tones (wet-in-wet technique) with relative ease. After having laid in the two principle tones, the darker paint was was carefully worked into the lighter one. Vermeer most likely used a small bristle brush for this purpose. The hard bristles leave evident trace of their movement and lend an air of vibrancy to the painter surface which parallels the effect of raking light on an uneven wall. If the result was not entirely satisfying, Vermeer probably cleaned the brush and carefully worked in the lighter paint into the darker paint until the transition between the two masses of paint was gradual enough. Although it may not seem logical, the working of dark paint into the light does not create the same effect as working the light paint into the darker one. A subtly different optical effect is achieved by each procedure. When the lighter area is worked into the darker area, the partial superimposition of the lighter layer over the darker produces a cool gray in the transition between the two masses of color. The effect is very characteristic of a strong incoming light and is produced by the so called turbid medium effect, an effect know and exploited by artists of the time. This cool gray area is very evident to the right of the woman's head and shoulder.

Care was taken not to overwork the paint since excessive blending produces a mechanical smoothness inconsonant with the vibrancy and sparkle of the uneven wall. Once the fundamental masses of light were established and the transition of dark to light was achieved to the artist's satisfaction, the darker passages of the shadow cast by the metal container and the slightly lighter left hand wall below the window were elaborate while the pigment was still wet (wet-in-wet). Vermeer took care to bring up the wet paint gently near the contours of the still-life and the figure so as to not overlap the underpainting which defined them. One can observe the ground which shows through along the contour of parts of the still life. This lighter area of paint suggest a sort of halo of light reflected from the objects it encounters.

Initially, Vermeer had included a map behind the standing maid and a clothes basket in the lower right-hand corner of the composition. The white layer of opaque paint covered both. However, a part of the map near the woman's head and the handle of the basket can still be identified with the naked eye by the presence of a cool gray area caused by the turbid medium effect. This effect has probably grown more evident with the passage of time.

Once the initial layer of paint was completely dry (in a later painting session), Vermeer most likely accentuated the dark vertical sliver of shadow to the immediate left of the hanging whicker basket, the stains and cracks of the wall under the window and the nail and nail holes on the right-hand illuminated passage with a mixture of black and a little umber.

The shadowed passages seemed to have been painted less densely that the lighter parts to the right of the picture. Painters understood that shadows were more effective when they were painted with thin transparent layers of paint. The cracks and stains have been firmly painted under the window drawing it nearer to the observer. The strongly illuminated area was executed with heavy impasto giving the wall a exceptional luminosity and a material presence. The play of the brush enlivens the otherwise the largely unmodulated area of white paint.

Although the effect of the flooding light is extremely dramatic, it has been created by tone and quality of the paint surface rather than by an absolute contrast between dark and light as can be observed in many paintings of the Baroque period. If we observe the small black frame above the still life which was painted with black, the deepest pigment available to the artist, we notice how light the pigment of the shadowed passage really is.