EX LIBRIS - JOHANNES VERMEER, La lattaia, c.1660 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. I SEGNALIBRI di LCDARTE - Libere Corrispondenze d'Arte
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JOHANNES VERMEER "The Milkmaid", c. 1660, oil on canvas, 45.5x41 cm Rijksmuseum Collection, Amsterdam on display in the Gallery of Honour |
More details: a maidservant pours milk, entirely absorbed in her work. Except for the stream of milk, everything else is still. Vermeer took this simple everyday activity and made it the subject of an impressive painting – the woman stands like a statue in the brightly lit room. Vermeer also had an eye for how light by means of hundreds of colourful dots plays over the surface of objects.
THE ART OF THE EX LIBRIS
With the expression ex libris (from the Latin “from the books of…”) we refer to a label, usually decorated with figures and mottos, which is applied to a book to indicate its owner. Labeling can be on paper, in precious materials such as leather or parchment, or in the form of a stamp, in this case, in ink, lacquer, fire or other. There are infinite and even complex variants with changing subjects. Remarkable remains the collection of the British Museum with about one hundred thousand specimens, while in Milan the Achille Bertarelli collection, housed in the Castello Sforzesco museum, is famous. Probably inspired by the so-called workshop signs, they were born in Germany not only because there the printing originated, but above all because there the xylography developed in an extraordinary way.
