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Girl with a Pearl Earring
When I was asked to do this post
for an art blog, I only had to think for a minute to come up with my topic. I
usually blog about movies, so I immediately thought about the Girl With a
Pearl Earring which is both a well known painting by the seventeenth
century Dutch artist Vermeer, as well as the title of a film about the creation
of the painting. The Girl With a Pearl Earring takes its title from its
subject. It is a portrait of a young girl who is wearing a large pearl earring
dangling from her left earlobe painted by Johannes Vermeer about 1665. She also
wears a turban and a robe of some kind, neither of which were everyday clothing
in seventeenth century Holland. The background is completely dark in order to
draw your attention to the figure of this young girl. This painting is usually
described as a tronie, which is a word that means face, since it is a
picture of a face. Some have suggested that Vermeer used a camera obscure to
help him create this wonderful painting. The pigment Vermeer used to paint the
blue part of the turban is natural ultramarine, which is crushed lapis lazuli
and was very expensive. Notice that Vermer uses no lines to create her nose. It
is all done with the use of shadow. It is not known who was the subject of the painting, or even if she was a real
person. Some have suggested she was Vermeer’s oldest daughter Maria, while the
movie says she is a servant of Vermeer’s household, who was the object of
Vermeer’s patron Van Rujven seduction
plot. The Girl With a Pearl Earring’s
expression has fascinated the viewer for three centuries. Looking at the
picture, you wonder what she is thinking
about and since she looks like she is about to speak, what is she going
to say. You can view the original
painting at the Mauritshuis museum in the Hague, Netherlands.
Sources:
Liedtke, Walter. Vermeer and the Delft School. New Haven,
CT, Yale University Press, 2001
Ivan Walters lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina and is in
sales.
And he’s also on facebook
Tumblr
And twitter as
inwalters
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Thank you Ivan, It was great to have you as a guest blogger, hope to have you back sometime as well.
I also had a small post about Vermeer, back in 2010 (in the infancy of this blog) do check it out here
