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MONDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2010


A humble subject has a big impact corcoran from C1


painting, only big pictures of heroic moments in church or national history counted for much. A painting like Char- din’s counted (and sold) for even less than a portrait, which is saying some- thing. So if it’s so lowly, why does this


“Scullery Maid” strike a viewer with such force?Maybe that is partly because because Chardin doesn’t let us notice how tiny his picture is. He forces us to come close and take in all its minuscule detail: the roughness of the girl’s coarse apron, the tiny sparkle of light (ren- dered by the smallest dot of paint) on the pearl or bell at her neck, the glint on a copper basin. We can’t imagine how Chardin achieved his lifelike effects, especially in such acompact package, so we approach to admire his skill. And once we’ve come so near, the painting fills our eyes as well as any mural could. Human vision can’t tell howbig something really is, out there in the world; it has to measure it by check- ing how much space it takes up in our field of view. Once Chardin drags us up to his painting, his maid looms so large that she might as well be in the room with us. Chardin’s figures are sometimes de-


scribed as achieving a “monumental” feeling, given their tiny size. He used tricks to trigger that feeling. We may know we’re close to the


Chardin we’re looking at, and feel we’re close to its subject, but there are also signals telling us we’re far away. The space in his scene seems strangely com- pressed, with less depth in it than we’d expect, less room between its objects. The empty foreground barely seems deep enough to have room for an over- size copper basin, a big copper lid and a large clay pot.We know that the maid’s wooden barrel has to be several feet deep, but it doesn’t look or feel like it is. If we were as close to the maid as we


are to her painting, we’d see down onto the top of that barrel, and most of its wide top would be open to our view; the claypotatherfeet,seenoutofthecorner of an eye, would have an almost fisheye distortion. If we don’t see any of these, wemust be far away, peering at our view through some imaginary telescope. And if you know you’re far away from


something and it still fills your field of view, then your brain can only come to one conclusion: What you’re seeing must be huge. It’s the same effect that makes figures seen through a telescope seem giantlike, rather than simply en- larged to a “normal” size so you can see them.The flatteningwesee inChardin’s “Scullery Maid” is the same flattening you getwhenshooting photos through a telephoto lens. Chardin’s effect conjures a “far-away-


nearby” that isn’t just about geeky opti- cal knowledge. It pays artistic and emo- tional dividends. One standard notion about serving


girls is (or at least was, among the artistoswhowere major clients ofChar- din’s) that they’re easy prey for any male around. Whether they like it or not, those girls are available, to the eye if not the hand. Almost any view of a maid, that is, is likely to have a bit of the leer about it — it will always smack of privacy invaded, of a view through the keyhole.YetChardin’s viewneither leers nor invades. Rather, the overall feeling of the Corc-


oran picture is of tenderness, a tender appreciation for its heroine despite her low status and menial job. And maybe that is partly because even though we’re seeing her clearly, our brains feel as if we’re doing so from very far away.We’re not close enough to touch her; we’re probably not close enough for her to notice thatwe’re there.Wehaveadisem- bodied, impartial, almost Godlike view of this “monumental” girl that we see, and we’re too removed from her flesh— or even from ideas of flesh—to want to make a grab for it. For a scene in a scullery, every object


in Chardin’s picture is so clean that it gleams. Our eyes, as viewers, are kept just as clean. By making his maid big, he’s also ennobled her, and anyone who looks at her. This painting may be “just” a genre


scene,butitachievesamazingelevation. Its hard-won monumentality lets Char- din escape the limits of the modest field he’s chosen to work in. gopnikb@washpost.com


HARDAT WORK: Jean- Baptiste- Simeon Chardin’s “The SculleryMaid” was painted in 1738 and first displayed at that year’s Paris Salon. In Chardin’s time, art collectors preferred sweeping scenes of history or grand portraits, but he painted his servant girl with a great tenderness for the dignity of her labor.


PHOTOS BY BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST


PACKINGA PUNCH: The small size of “The Scullery Maid,” seen at lower right in this viewof the Corcoran’s Mantel Room, is apparent when it appears beside other works. Yet Chardin filled his canvas with a stunning amount of lifelike detail, forcing the viewer to take a much closer look at the painter’s plain yet moving subject.


DOONESBURYFLASHBACKS by Garry Trudeau


CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson


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