Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665)
Mauritshuis, The Hague
A tronie (not a portrait) of a girl in a blue and yellow turban glancing over her shoulder — the "Mona Lisa of the North"
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Johannes Vermeer
1632–1675 · Dutch
Dutch Golden Age / Baroque
Johannes Vermeer spent his whole life in Delft, producing only around 35 surviving paintings, mostly quiet domestic interiors of women reading, writing or working in soft daylight. Little known after his death, he was rediscovered in the 19th century and is now celebrated as a supreme master of light, colour and stillness.
How to spot them
- ▸Soft daylight streaming through a leaded window on the left onto a single figure absorbed in a quiet task
- ▸Luminous ultramarine blues and lemon yellows, with tiny pointillé highlights of light on bread, pearls and metal
- ▸Recurring props: maps on the wall, a yellow fur-trimmed jacket, chequered tiled floors, pearls, letters
- ▸Quiz clue pattern: Delft, the Mauritshuis, a pearl earring, camera obscura, "Sphinx of Delft"
Key works
View of Delft (c. 1660–1661)
Mauritshuis, The Hague
The town seen across the water; Proust's character Bergotte dies contemplating its "little patch of yellow wall"
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Milkmaid (c. 1660)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A kitchen maid pours a thin stream of milk into an earthenware bowl
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Art of Painting (c. 1666–1668)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
An artist paints a model dressed as Clio, muse of history, before a map of the Netherlands; once owned by Hitler
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Little Street (c. 1658)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Quiet brick house fronts in Delft; one of only two townscapes he painted
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Woman Reading a Letter (c. 1663)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Also called Woman in Blue Reading a Letter; a pregnant-looking woman in a blue jacket before a map
Image: Johannes Vermeer · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •He lived and worked in Delft all his life and was a head of the city's Guild of St Luke.
- •Only about 35 to 37 paintings are accepted as his, making him one of the least prolific of the great masters.
- •He died in debt in 1675, leaving his wife Catharina Bolnes with eleven surviving children.
- •The French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger rediscovered him in the 1860s, calling him the "Sphinx of Delft".
- •Tracy Chevalier's 1999 novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was filmed in 2003 with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.
- •The forger Han van Meegeren sold a fake Vermeer, Christ and the Adulteress, to Hermann Göring.
- •His painting The Concert was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and has never been recovered.
- •He may have used a camera obscura, a theory often debated in relation to his optical effects.
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Mauritshuis — Girl with a Pearl Earring (collection entry)
- Rijksmuseum — The Milkmaid (collection entry)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Johannes Vermeer