The Milkmaid
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665. Oil on canvas, 44.5 × 39 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Public domain.
The image on this page is a studio placeholder, not the painting. The open-access file from Mauritshuis, The Hague replaces it when the gallery's image pipeline runs — we would rather show you a card that says so than a reproduction we have not verified.
Dutch Golden Age
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer · c. 1665
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 44.5 × 39 cm
- Held by
- Mauritshuis, The Hague
- Licence
- Public domain
- Movement
- Dutch Golden Age
- Country
- Netherlands
The painter
Johannes Vermeer
Around thirty-five paintings by Vermeer are generally accepted, which for a career of roughly twenty years is about two a year — a rate that tells you most of what you need to know about how he worked. He spent his whole life in Delft, ran an art dealing business inherited from his father, served twice as head of the painters' guild, had fifteen children of whom eleven survived him, and died in debt at forty-three, leaving his widow to petition for bankruptcy. Almost all the paintings are interiors, most lit from a window on the left, and many reuse the same objects and the same corner of the same room.
Nearby
Related works
View of Delft
Mauritshuis, The Hague
What to look at
Strictly this is not a portrait but a tronie — a Dutch genre of head study of an anonymous or invented figure, often in exotic dress, made to demonstrate skill rather than to record a sitter. That is why nobody knows who she is, and why the question is probably the wrong one. The turban is the exotic element. The earring is the trick: it is two brushstrokes. One broad stroke of soft grey-white for the body of the pearl and one small sharp highlight at the top left, and there is no outline, no sphere, no modelling — recent technical examination suggests the pearl has no clearly defined contour at all. The background, now a flat dark, was originally a deep green glaze that has degraded, so the void she emerges from is partly an accident of chemistry rather than Vermeer's intention.