Girl with a Pearl Earring
A girl turns towards us with her mouth open. This is not a commissioned portrait but a tronie – a study of a face and an exotic turban.
The pearl is just a few brushstrokes: a bright highlight at the top and a fainter one below.
Johannes Vermeer lived his whole life in the Dutch town of Delft. He was active in the 1650s, 1660s and 1670s and worked slowly. Today only about thirty-five paintings by him are known. Girl with a Pearl Earring is usually dated to around 1665. The painting bears no date, so the year is an estimate.
The picture is not a commissioned portrait. It is a so-called tronie, a Dutch type of picture showing a face, a character or an expression, often in fanciful costume. No one knows who the model was. It has been speculated that she might be one of Vermeer’s daughters, but there is no evidence. Novels and films have filled the gap with invented stories.
The girl turns her head over her shoulder towards us. Her mouth is slightly open and her eyes are large and shining. She wears a blue and yellow turban with a length of cloth hanging down behind her head, and a yellowish-brown jacket with a white collar. From her ear hangs a large pearl that catches the light. The background is dark, almost black, so that the face stands out sharply. Her lips have a moist sheen, and tiny white points of light in her eyes and at the corner of her mouth bring the face to life.
The pearl consists of just a few brushstrokes. A bright highlight at the top and a fainter reflection below are enough to create the impression of a gleaming drop. There is no visible hook attaching it to the ear. Because the pearl is unusually large, it has been suggested that it actually represents an earring of glass or polished tin, but this is an interpretation.
Vermeer used expensive pigments. The blue of the turban is natural ultramarine, made from the crushed semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. A major investigation in 2018 showed that the dark background was originally a green curtain, painted in a translucent colour that has darkened over time. The researchers also found tiny eyelashes that cannot be seen with the naked eye. The painting is small, about 45 by 40 centimetres.
In the 19th century Vermeer was almost forgotten. The painting was sold at auction in The Hague in 1881 for a very low sum. The buyer, the collector Arnoldus des Tombe, bequeathed it to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it has been since the early 20th century. It was thoroughly restored in the 1990s.
The picture is sometimes called “the Mona Lisa of the North”. It became especially famous through Tracy Chevalier’s 1999 novel and the 2003 film, both of which invent a story about the model. While the Mauritshuis was being renovated in 2012–2014, the painting went on tour to Japan, the United States and Italy and attracted huge crowds. Today it is generally not lent out.