Girl with a Pearl Earring - Johannes Vermeer (ca. 1665)

Johannes Vermeer

Oil on canvas

Mauritshuis

Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Meisje met de parel) is an oil painting on canvas by the Dutch Golden Age master Johannes Vermeer, dated to approximately 1665. The work depicts a young woman in a three-quarter view, turning her head over her shoulder toward the viewer, wearing an exotic blue and gold turban, a gold jacket with a white collar, and a luminously rendered pearl earring against a dark background. Rather than a commissioned portrait, the painting is a tronie — a Dutch term for a study of a head representing a generalized character or type — in which Vermeer's celebrated mastery of light is evident in the soft modeling of the subject's face, the gleam on her parted lips, and the brilliant economy of the earring rendered in just two strokes of paint. Working almost exclusively in Delft, Vermeer produced only around 36 known paintings in his lifetime, and this work stands as perhaps the most celebrated example of his refined technique and intimate pictorial vision.