Milkmaid's Family

The Milkmaid Family is a painting by Louis Le Nain (1593-1648), made in the 1640s, which is in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

The painting slightly depicts on the right a milkmaid dressed in white, her copper pot held on the left shoulder by a strap. She is surrounded to her right by her teenage eldest son and to her left behind her, her husband and granddaughter. The family stands behind a saddled donkey, painted in profile, which takes the middle of the painting, as if to prove the submissive destiny of the different characters.

Alone, the husband of the milkmaid, whose bust can only be seen, looks in front of him, straight in the direction of the "spectator" of this scene. The milkmaid is ready to go; in the distance a flat countryside landscape extends to the horizon, towards a line of perspective starting on the left. Two barrels stand almost invisible in the shadow in the foreground. A small dog wrapped on him is at the foot of the milkmaid who suggests that the starting scene lasts, as if time had stopped.