A Gilded wine Jug or Tankard

"1 gilded wine jug or tankard " / 1 vergulde wijncan"

A gilded wine jug and its matching basin are both seen in the painting 'Woman with a Water / Wine Jug' in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Michael Montias wrote about this wine jug or tankard:

"Only one item that Maria Thins gave to her daughter Catherina in one of her testaments seems to be represented in a Vermeer picture." [...] "A gilded jug was such a rare and valuable object that I doubt there could have been another one that was anything like it in the Vermeer household."

At my request Michael Montias explained in 2003:

"I had written about the wine jug on p. 190 of the English edition of my book [Vermeer and his Milieu] that Maria Thins had given to her daughter Catharina in 1657 and confirmed "in one of her testaments" (actually the second) in 1662 a "gilded wine tankard" (p.317). In the Dutch edition, a much more complete version of the testament is available. On p. 361, the text reads "1 vergulde wijncan"."

Given the solid morning dress of the woman and her sober appearance there seems to be no foundation at all for renaming the Metropolitan Vermeer painting "Early Morning; Wine Drinking Woman by the Window, In Need of some Fresh Air". ;-)

On the question of whether it is a water jug or wine jug .. who knows.

I think that by 1676 the gilt jug may have either been sold or hocked because of financial difficulties in the Vermeer family since 1672. If it was still kept within the house, it must have been kept illegally hidden from the notary or his assistant.

Note : This gilded jug object was NOT part of the Vermeer-inventory as listed by the clerk working for Delft notary public J. van Veen. He made this list on February 29, 1676, in the Thins/Vermeer home located on Oude Langendijk on the corner of Molenpoort. The painter Johannes Vermeer had died there at the end of December 1675. His widow Catherina and their eleven children still lived there with her mother Maria Thins.

The transcription of the 1676 inventory, now in the Delft archives, is based upon its first full publication by A.J.J.M. van Peer, "Drie collecties...", Oud Holland, 1957, pp. 98-103. My additions and explanations are added in square brackets [__]. Dutch terms have been checked against the world's largest language dictionary, the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal , or WNT), which was begun by De Vries en Te Winkel in 1882.

Montias, Vermeer and his Milieu, p 190.

This page forms part of a large encyclopedic site on Vermeer and Delft. Research by Drs. Kees Kaldenbach (email). A full presentation is on view at johannesvermeer.info.

Launched December, 2002; Last update March 2, 2017.

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