Girl with a Pearl Earring: What Science Revealed About Vermeer's Girl
She is not a portrait, the pearl has no hook and the dark background was once a green curtain. What the Mauritshuis research of 2018 found in Vermeer's most famous painting.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the most recognisable faces in European painting, yet almost nothing about her is what it seems. Recent technical research has changed how we read the picture.
Not a portrait
Johannes Vermeer painted the picture around 1665 in oil on canvas, on a small scale of 44.5 × 39 cm, and signed it IVMeer; it is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.1 It is a tronie, a Dutch term for a study of a type or character: a young woman in exotic dress rather than a likeness of a known person.1
What the 2018 research found
In 2018 the Mauritshuis examined the painting in the project Girl in the Spotlight, led by the conservator Abbie Vandivere.2 The scans showed that Vermeer painted eyelashes, which are no longer visible to the naked eye, and that the dark background was originally a green curtain.2
A pearl without a hook
The earring has no outline and no hook to hang it from the ear. Vermeer suggested it with a few touches of light-coloured paint.2
Precious pigments
The research also traced Vermeer's materials: lead white from the Peak District in England, ultramarine made from lapis lazuli from present-day Afghanistan, and red made from cochineal insects.2
The novel, the film and the myth
Tracy Chevalier's 1999 novel turned the girl into a maid called Griet, and the 2003 film adaptation made that story famous.1
Our video tells the same story in English.
Sources
- 1Girl with a Pearl Earring (painting by Vermeer). Encyclopaedia Britannica
- 2Researchers Studying Vermeer's 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' Discover the Painting's Hidden Details. Artnet News, 2020
