Girl with a Pearl Earring

One of Johannes Vermeer’s mysterious artworks which are universally recognized is the Girl with a Pearl Earring. This piece of artwork still poses a few unanswered questions and wonders after more than a century of studies. The identity of the sitter in the portrait, who is she? What significance did the pearl earring have? When was the exact date of the painting? Vermeer was born and raised in the Dutch town, Delft and began his genre paintings in the late 1650s. Although Vermeer produced only 36 paintings in his lifetime, he had a different approach to his artworks. Dutch paintings were very popular as it captures the everyday experiences and the affection of the land and homes in the town. Paintings celebrate and record the facts of life enhancing the intense consideration of warmth and cooler qualities of light. Vermeer adapted the expressive scenes taking on a timeless presence to impart them as extraordinary dignity and moral gravity. Girl with a Pearl Earring has been called as The Dutch Mona Lisa during the Golden Age. She is young, delicate and has an appealing and questioning look on her face with her head slightly turned towards us. She is wearing a rich golden robe with a white collar, a blue turban with yellow falling behind her. She is set against a dark defined background which dominates the space of the scene. Vermeer discovered the skill behind optics and light to capture what the audience sees. The uneven and spotted dark background enhance the three-dimensional effect of the figure as light illuminates something delicate which takes us to the pearl earring as a focal point. Pearls in the17th Century was a status symbol and conveys a sense of purity and innocence which together make a representation of a timeless beauty. Over many centuries, the young girl with sympathetic eyes starring over her shoulder holds no attributes that identify her and her age Vermeer is known for painting religious and mythological themes and the evident interest of the female presence and activity. This encourages the audience to understand Vermeer’s challenge to explore the intimate aspects of female nature as well as their relation to social context. It is the lack of historic and iconographic framework that conveys such immediacy to all who view her. Identities of the sitter’s in most of Vermeer’s paintings have ever been recognized, including the girl in Girl with a Pearl Earring. It has believed she may have been Vermeer’s first daughter; Maria aged about 12 or 13 between 1665 and1667. The painting was not seen as a portrait but a tronie, and considers the model in Vermeer’s Art of Painting. Contemporary scholars do not agree with the subject as they believe the painting is an idealized study and reveals Vermeer’s classical tendencies. Even though his artworks seem so realistic, modification to scale and shape have been made to achieve balance in the composition and strength. The mixtures of colours used by Vermeer suggest the intensity of light and tonal values. His paint build-up through brushwork creates uneven and granular effects and captures the attention of the audience. There are studies which explore the number of aspects of Vermeer’s painting techniques and materials although it is difficult to describe as his methods is complicated by the artist experimenting different techniques throughout his career. It has been detected that the use of chalk, charcoal, tempera and oil paints in various tones were used with the initial drawing of the figure. One of the most important stages in his procedure is the underpainting after the initial drawing was complete to ensure the accuracy of lights and darks, composition, volume and substances to the form to create an effect illumination. Colours used in underpainting include warm browns, black and white. The next stage was to give correct colouring and fix the final contours of the forms. This procedure is called working-up. Each area of the painting corresponded to a distinct visual experience to render the illusionistic visual experience as convincing as possible. As you can see, the girl’s face was illuminated with the work-up procedure with two layers of thin flesh tone using a badger. As artist had very few colours in the days, glazing was used to create the vibrant colours. For example, blue and red were glazed over each other to create purple. There were two areas in which Vermeer used glazing. The blue part of the turban with ultramarine blue and white and then a thin transparent layer of ultramarine once the first layer was dry to add depth and chromatic power to the underlying opaque blue. While Vermeer’s painting techniques was never a fixed technique, his artworks show that his use of methods and materials were those used by contemporaries. His work shows a sense of realistic impression, sensuous quality and mystery. This enables the audiences to understand the sophisticated perspective and his used of innovative ways to create a sense of space and awareness of its psychological impact.