Word Watch: Masterpiece

My pedantic mind is always a trifle disturbed when confronted by the word “masterpiece” as it’s regularly used in modern journalism. A representative instance was to be found in a note about Vermeer in The Week last September: “Advanced scanning technologies have given art historians new insights into Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece The Milkmaid (c. 1660)…”

Now Vermeer’s output wasn’t large – about forty works in all; and I find myself asking: is The Milkmaid his finest work? His most famous work? His most expensive work (a criterion that often seems to be at the forefront of people’s minds these days)? Perhaps it’s just a typical example of his work? But “masterpiece” conveys something more than that, surely: it suggests exceptional distinction. As the OED reminds us, mankind itself, the human race, has been referred to as “the masterpiece of God’s creation”, with the clear implication that it is supreme among all created works. (We needn’t be distracted here by the feminist contention that “mankind” is not demonstrably “superior” to “womankind”. In the past “man” unequivocally meant “humankind”, without distinction of gender, and for purely practical reasons I regret the loss of that sense.)   

The OED also spells out the earliest meaning of “masterpiece”: the word denoted “the piece of work by which a craftsman gained from his guild the recognised rank of ‘master'”. It may not, in the long run, prove to be his finest work, but it enjoys some distinction as having won special commendation. The important idea has always been of uniqueness. When Macduff announces the discovery of Macbeth’s murder of Duncan he cries: “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece” – this is the supreme act of Confusion, a deed without parallel.

Vermeer’s Milkmaid can’t be said to be without parallel: on the contrary, it is a typical picture by Vermeer, a fine example, but fine by virtue of being characteristic, not exceptional. I accept that the use of “masterpiece” has broadened under the pressure of everyday usage, and lost some of its sharpness of purpose, as words will in such circumstances. But we sometimes need the clarity and certainty that signals exceptional characteristics, and it would be helpful if “masterpiece” could cling on to something of that distinction, rather than lose it altogether in the woolly commendation of the current shorthand for “an object we are agreed possesses enough merit (or renown) to make it immensely valuable”.

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