Until 1995, this now famous oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665, was known as Girl with a Turban. It was not until the Mauritshuis in The Hague decided that Girl with a Pearl Earring was a better name. Vincent Icke concluded in 2014 that the earring cannot be a pearl, the mirrored reflection, pear shape and size are alien to a standard pearl. After being confronted with the fact that the pearl in the painting is not a pearl, the museum indicated that it did not want to change the name again.
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. 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. 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.
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” and not dated, but it’s estimated to have been painted around 1665.
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. 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. In 2014, Dutch astrophysicist Vincent Icke 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.
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 $400 at current purchasing power). 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.
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. By that time, as a result of its promotion, a CNN survey named it one of the world’s most recognisable paintings.
The painting was investigated by the scientists of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage and FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) Amsterdam. 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.
In February 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. The project, with the name The Girl in the Spotlight, was headed by Abbie Vandivere, conservator at the Mauritshuis, and results were published by the Mauritshuis. A blog by Vandivere reveals many details of the project.
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”.
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.
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. 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, while Marilyn Chandler McEntyre commented on the girl’s private, self-possessed personality.
