Girl with a Pearl Earring

66 languages
 Article
 Talk
 Read
 Edit
 View history
Tools

















From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Dutch: Meisje met de parel

 Artist Johannes Vermeer

Year c. 1665

Type Tronie

Medium Oil on canvas

Movement Dutch Golden Age painting

Dimensions 44.5 cm × 39 cm (17.5 in × 15 in)

Location Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands

This article is about the painting. For other uses, see Girl with a Pearl Earring
(disambiguation).
Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Meisje met de parel)[1][2] is an oil painting by Dutch
Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665. Going by various names over
the centuries, it became known by its present title towards the end of the 20th century
after the earring worn by the girl portrayed there.[3] The work has been in the collection of
the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary
and cinematic treatments.
Description[edit]
The painting is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a "head" that was not
meant to be a portrait. It depicts a European girl wearing "exotic dress", an
"oriental turban", and what appears to be a very large pearl as an earring.[1] The subject
of the painting is unknown, with it being possible either that she was a real model, or
that Vermeer created a more generalised and mysterious woman, perhaps representing
a Sibyl or biblical figure.[4] There has been speculation that she is the artist's eldest
daughter, Maria, though this has been dismissed as an anachronism by some art
historians.[5][6]
The work is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm (17.5 in) high and 39 cm (15 in) wide. It is
signed "IVMeer" but not dated. It is estimated to have been painted around 1665. [7]
After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle colour scheme and
the intimacy of the girl's gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced.[8] During
the restoration, it was discovered that the dark background, today somewhat mottled,
was originally a deep enamel-like green. This effect was produced by applying a thin
transparent layer of paint—a glaze—over the black background seen now. However,
the two organic pigments of the green glaze, indigo and weld, have faded.[9] In 2014,
Dutch astrophysicist Vincent Icke [nl] raised doubts about the material of the earring and
argued that it looks more like polished tin than pearl on the grounds of the specular
reflection, the pear shape and the large size of the earring.[10][11]
Ownership and display[edit]

The Mauritshuis in The Hague, 2011, showing a

representation of the painting at right
On the advice of Victor de Stuers, who for years tried to prevent Vermeer's rare works
from being sold to parties abroad, Arnoldus Andries des Tombe purchased the work at
an auction in The Hague in 1881, for only two guilders plus thirty cents buyer's
premium (around €24 at current purchasing power[12]). At the time, it was in poor
condition, with parts of the paint layer having become detached. Des Tombe had no
heirs and by a bequest donated this and other paintings to the Mauritshuis in 1902.[13]
The painting has since been widely exhibited about the world until in 2014 the
Mauritshuis took the decision that it should not leave the museum in the future.[14] By that
time, as a result of its promotion, a CNN survey named it one of the world's most
recognizable paintings.[15]
Painting technique[edit]
The painting was investigated by the scientists of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural
Heritage and FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) Amsterdam.[16]
The ground is dense and yellowish in colour and is composed of chalk, lead
white, ochre and very little black. The dark background of the painting contains bone
black, weld (luteolin, Reseda luteola), chalk, small amounts of red ochre, and indigo.
The face and draperies were painted mainly using ochres, natural ultramarine, bone
black, charcoal black and lead white.[17]
In February-March 2018 an international team of art experts spent two weeks studying
the painting in a specially constructed glass workshop in the museum, open to
observation by the public. The non-invasive research project included removing the
work from its frame for study with microscopes, X-ray equipment and a special scanner
to learn more about the methods and materials used by Vermeer.[18][19] The project, with
the name The Girl in the Spotlight, was headed by Abbie Vandivere, conservator at the
Mauritshuis,[20] and results were published by the Mauritshuis.[21] A blog by Vandivere
reveals many details of the project.[22]
Results included the presence of delicate eyelashes, a green curtain behind the head,
changes made, and details of the pigments used and where they came from. The lack
of eyebrows and featureless background had led to speculation that Vermeer was
painting an idealised or abstract face; the later discoveries showed that he was painting
a real person in a real space. The pearl has been described as an illusion due to having
"no contour and also no hook to hang it from the girl’s ear".[23]
Painting title[edit]
The painting has gone under a number of titles in various countries over the centuries.
Originally it may have been one of the two tronies "painted in the Turkish fashion"
(Twee tronijnen geschildert op sijn Turx) recorded in the inventory at the time of
Vermeer’s death.[24] It may later have been the work appearing in the catalogue to a
1696 sale of painting in Amsterdam, where it is described as a "Portrait in Antique
Costume, uncommonly artistic" (Een Tronie in Antique Klederen, ongemeen konstig).[25]
After the bequest to the Mauritshuis, the painting became known as Girl with a
Turban (Meisje met tulband) and it was noted of its original description in the 1675
inventory that the turban had become a fashion accessory of some fascination during
the period of European wars against the Turks.[26] By 1995, the title Girl with a
Pearl (Meisje met de parel) was considered more appropriate.[27] Pearls, in fact, figure in
21 of Vermeer's pictures,[28] including very prominently in Woman with a Pearl Necklace.
Earrings alone are also featured in A Lady Writing a Letter, Study of a Young
Woman, Girl with a Red Hat, and Girl with a Flute. Similarly shaped ear-pieces were
used as convincing accessories in 20th-century fakes that were briefly attributed to
Vermeer, such as Young Woman with a Blue Hat, Smiling Girl and The Lace Maker.[29]
Generally, the English title of the painting was simply Head of a Young Girl, although it
was sometimes known as The Pearl. One critic explained that this name was given, not
just from the detail of the earring, but because the figure glows with an inner radiance
against the dark background.[30]
Cultural impact[edit]
Some of the first literary treatments of the painting were in poems. For Yann Lovelock in
his sestina, "Vermeer’s Head of a Girl", it is the occasion for exploring the interplay
between imagined beauty interpreted on canvas and living experience.[31] W. S. Di
Piero reimagined how the "Girl with Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer" might look in
the modern setting of Haight Street in San Francisco,[32] while Marilyn Chandler
McEntyre commented on the girl's private, self-possessed personality.[33]
There have also been fictional appearances. As La ragazza col turbante (Girl with a
Turban, 1986), it features as the general title of Marta Morazzoni’s collection of five
short novellas set in the Baroque era. In the course of the title story, a Dutch art dealer
sells Vermeer’s painting to an eccentric Dane in the year 1658. Indifferent to women in
real life, the two men can only respond to the idealization of the feminine in art. [34] Tracy
Chevalier's 1999 historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring fictionalized the
circumstances of the painting's creation. There, Vermeer becomes close to a servant
whom he uses as an assistant and has sit for him as a model while wearing his wife's
earrings. The novel was adapted into a 2003 film of the same name and a 2008 play.[35][36]
In addition, the painting appeared in the 2007 film St Trinian's, where a group of unruly
schoolgirls steal it to raise funds to save their school.[37] At that period, too, fellow artists
made iconic use of Vermeer's painting. Ethiopian American Awol Erizku recreated it as
a print in 2009, centering a young black woman and replacing the pearl earring with
bamboo earrings as a commentary on the lack of black figures in museums and
galleries. His piece is titled Girl with a Bamboo Earring.[38] And in 2014 the English street
artist Banksy reproduced the painting as a mural in Bristol, incorporating an alarm box
in place of the pearl earring and calling the artwork Girl with a Pierced Eardrum.[39]
A climate activist representing the Just Stop Oil campaign attempted to glue his head to
the glass protecting the painting in October 2022, and was covered in tomato soup by
another protester.[40] The protest did not damage the painting, and three people were
arrested for public violence against goods.[40][41]

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring