The Milkmaid

Vermeer produced only around 34 to 37 known paintings in his entire career and died in 1675 leaving his family in debt. For nearly two centuries after his death he was largely forgotten, until the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger identified and championed his work in the 1860s, triggering a reassessment that made him one of the most celebrated painters in history. The Milkmaid remained together with most of Vermeer's other known works in the hands of his Delft patron Pieter van Ruijven's family until the Dissius sale of 1696 — one of the most important auctions in art history, at which 21 Vermeer paintings were dispersed at once. The painting passed through Amsterdam collector families for two centuries before entering the collection of the Six family, one of Amsterdam's most storied patrician dynasties. The Rijksmuseum purchased it from the Six heirs in 1908 for fl. 550,000 — an enormous sum — with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, a fundraising society that had been founded specifically to prevent Dutch masterworks from leaving the country.