Vermeer And The Girl With The Pearl Earring

In our day, the name Vermeer instantly evokes the image of the girl immortalized in the painting The Girl with a Pearl Earring. And it is one of the most easily identifiable pictorial works by the general public. This piece is so important that it is called the Mona Lisa of the North.

The 17th century Dutch master’s splendid rendition of an ordinary girl has become a universal icon. The painting shows the young woman, against a mysterious dark background, and highlights a pearl shining on her lobe.

Vermeer’s art became the canon of Dutch Golden Age works of art; his work is intimate and traditional. He dedicated his mastery to exploring the moments of everyday life, documenting interior spaces, the epitome of the baroque genre.

However, his mastery of pigment and light elevated the artist beyond the realm of his contemporaries. His talent gave him an inimitable glimpse of the lifestyle of his time.

Jan Vermeer’s early life

For hundreds of years, people have been fascinated and inspired by the paintings of Johannes (aka Jan) Vermeer . This painter is often considered the most respected Dutch painter in history. However, his life and his art are shrouded in mystery.

Vermeer was born in 1632 in Delft, the Netherlands, although the exact date is not known. He was born into a lower middle class family. Johannes Vermeer van Delft is also known as Joannis ver Meer or Joannis van der Meer.

His father, Reijnier Jansz, was a silk weaver craftsman who became an innkeeper and later an art dealer. From these commercial labors, a taste for painting germinated in the young Vermeer.

His mother, Digna Baltus, is believed to have been an illiterate housewife. This belief started because Baltus signed an ‘X’ instead of his name on his marriage certificate.

When Vermeer’s father died in 1652, young Johannes inherited both of his father’s businesses. Before this event, his first 20 years of life are barely documented. Despite very extensive research, no clear answer has been found.

In 1653, Vermeer married Catherina Bolnes and converted to Catholicism. The couple had 15 children, four of whom died.

Interestingly, with eleven children running, only two of Vermeer’s paintings directly portray the children. Rather, his wife Catherine served as a model for many of Vermeer’s works.

Early work and maturity

In Vermeer’s early career, the artist focused on the production of paintings based on history. Also, at this time, he recreated many scenes from the Bible and classical mythology.

Thanks to his mother-in-law, Maria, Vermeer was able to gain access to the richest citizens of Delft, such as Pieter van Ruijven. However, unlike most of his contemporaries, Vermeer never left his hometown and relied solely on local patronage for his commissions.

Johannes and Catherine are believed to have lived a happy married life until Vermeer’s untimely death in 1675. It is believed that he died of a stroke. The couple were married for 22 years.

Catherine supported her husband’s work. Like most artists during these times, Vermeer also racked up a series of debts that remained with his family after his death.

Vermeer’s limited success had to do with the inability to find commissions outside of Delft. In addition to the fact that he did not leave the city to commercialize his works and talent.

Its limited success is also related to the limitation of the materials with which it worked. Vermeer, unlike Rembrandt, did not work with prints, which were extremely popular at the time.

The little success of the painter at that historical moment is also due to fortuitous circumstances. For example, the Franco-Dutch war. The fact that troops constantly invaded the city had an impact on the flourishing of the art market.

Death and mysteries of Vermeer

Master Vermeer fell ill and died in the year 1675. That December, his burial was officiated in Delft. Given their debts, his wife was forced to give up her inheritance and, as a consequence, her assets were confiscated by her creditors.

Vermeer was the head of the Delft Artists Guild, a group of artists who met to learn from each other and discuss techniques.

Although he was highly respected by his peers, he died poor and almost completely unknown for a long two hundred years. When his work was rediscovered by world art in the 19th century, the mysteries surrounding his life resurfaced.

How did Vermeer master the art of creating clarity in his paintings, many of which could, at first glance, be mistaken for photographs? How did you capture so much light and shadow when your paintings took many months to create? These questions remain unanswered.

There are those who maintain that his dominance was, simply, unmatched. Others say he created an early type of camera, called a ‘camera obscura’, which allowed him to ‘stop time’ and study the effects of light. On the other hand, there are those who find flaws in their paintings or attribute them to someone else.

Vermeer usually painted portraits or scenes of people doing their daily work. Only two landscapes are attributed to him. The pintoe understood the effect of light and reflection on a person or an object. Art experts attribute the realism of his paintings to this fact. Essentially, Vermeer recognized that the eye does not see the entire object and its actual color, due to the effects of light and reflection.

The girl of the pearl

Looking closely at Vermeer’s paintings, we can see their unmistakable signatures, the use of light, and the ability to capture real life. The young woman with the pearl is one of his most famous works.

The painting shows a girl, her earring prodigiously reflects the light, while she turns her gaze towards the painter. From this painting, the shadows projected on the girl’s cheek and nose that fade into the background are astonishing.

The painting provided the inspiration for Tracy Chavalier’s novel in 1999, and a film a few years later.

Without a doubt, it is one of the most emblematic paintings in the history of art, one of those symbols that, although we are not experts in the field, we can recognize and enjoy.