Shop art print and framed art Girl with a Pearl Earring (detail) by Johannes Vermeer

The Girl with the Pearl (in Dutch: Meisje met de parel) is an oil painting on canvas by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, painted around 1665. This medium-sized painting is a bust portrait of an anonymous young woman - possibly one of Vermeer's daughters - wearing a pearl in her ear and a turban on her head. It is also known as the "Mona Lisa of the North" because of its composition and subject, which are so similar to the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Although the painting reveals a definite influence of Italian portraiture, it belongs above all to the pictorial genre of the tronies, character studies typical of the art of the United Provinces in the mid-seventeenth century. In this respect, The Girl with the Pearl is representative of the golden age of Dutch painting, a period of exceptional richness in European pictorial creation. Today, this painting, Vermeer's most popular, is considered one of his masterpieces because of its composition and the atmosphere it conveys. However, this recognition is relatively recent, since the painting was forgotten for over two hundred years, until it was rediscovered by the art collector Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, who bequeathed it to the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague in 1903. The painting has been conserved and exhibited there ever since. In 1994, it underwent a restoration that enabled us to better appreciate its quality and to understand more precisely the technique used by Vermeer. The painting is on canvas and uses oil paint as [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the baroque style.

 

« Girl with a Pearl Earring (detail) » is kept at Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands.

 

Find the full description of Girl with a Pearl Earring (detail) by Johannes Vermeer on Wikipedia.