The wife....
and family of Vermeer surely are no picnic in this movie.
Lying, petty, and Caterina with her jewels! You would have thought they sat up and talked love back to her!
Yeah, the wife was pretty high strung, but I still felt a bit sorry for her. It's obvious that she really didn't "get" her husband's work and his passion for painting, so that was something that they couldn't connect with on any level. So it had to have been galling to see her husband connecting with some nobody servant girl and painting a portrait of her when her husband never painted her because she "didn't understand".
She also wasn't stupid, Vermeer was quite obviously fascinated with Griet and didn't do much to hide it. And after van Ruijven made that not so subtle insinuation that there was something more than just painting going on in the studio, that only just ignited her worst fears.
I actually disliked Cornellia (the daughter) more than Vermeer's wife. She just seemed to be a brat for no reason.
As I posted elsewhere, I think Cornelia was a brat because she was a middle child. She was not a son and not the oldest daughter, the most advantageous positions for a child in a large family. And with the birth of each new baby -- because Catharina didn't breastfeed them herself, they were coming along almost yearly -- Cornelia became more insignificant. The only way she could make her parents pay attention to her was by acting out.
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