The Simplicity and Attraction of Vermeer’s Most Famous Painting

Meeting the gaze of “Girl with a Pearl Earring”

Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665) by Johannes Vermeer. Oil on canvas. 44.5 × 39 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands. Image source Wikimedia Commons

There are just 34 paintings firmly attributed to the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. Girl with a Pearl Earring is undoubtedly the most famous of them.

It is also one of his most inscrutable works.

So familiar is the image that it can sometimes be easy to look past it and fail to notice what is exactly in front of our eyes.

Here I want to consider the painting again, and reveal the inner tensions that make it such an arresting and — the more you look at it — intense image.

Strokes of Clarity

The painting shows a young girl glancing unflinchingly over her shoulder. She is dressed in a blue and yellow turban, and wears an earring that has for a long time been referred to as a pearl.

Detail of ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ (c.1665) by Johannes Vermeer. Oil on canvas. 44.5 × 39 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands. Image source Wikimedia Commons

The first mark of Vermeer’s brilliance is in his economy with detail.

The blue and yellow of her headscarf — a costume that lends the painting its subtle exoticism — are captured through sparely painted highlights. Strips of…