Last weekend, I was in Amsterdam, looking at this painting. It’s a scene of stillness and silence. At first, the only sound is of the milk trickling into the earthenware pot. Then you hear the slight rasp of the woman’s breath. That bodice constricts. Unseen, outside, wooden clogs, hasten to the canal. Far off are the deep voices of the bargees and between rumbles, fishwives shrill. The room smells damp.
Allow your eye to travel from the lighted window over the basket and down to the maid’s wrist. Run along her arm, over her head and down her side to the tiny heater on the floor. That’s the line Vermeer wanted you to follow. Art historians have had this picture under X-ray. But it wasn’t his plan in the first draft.
Do you see those Delft tiles? And above them, a smudgy area? And the outline of a square on the cream wall?
When Vermeer painted this, he had shelves and crockery and firewood on that wall.
Then he took a step back and thought, ‘No’.
Less is more. Trim the fat. Unnecessary detail distracts the eye.
When you come to revise your first draft, is there something Vermeer could teach you?
