5. Girl With a Pearl Earring
Girl With a Pearl Earring is an oil on canvas painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. It was painted in 1665. It has been on display in The Hague since 1902. The art is unusual in that depicts a white woman in an exotic dress, an Eastern turban, and features an unnaturally large pearl. The pearl earring is, in fact, so large that a Dutch physicist questioned if it were really a pearl at all and not depicting a piece of polished tin.
Much like the Mona Lisa, the model for the Girl With a Pearl Earring has been the source of much historical debate. However, in this case, the most likely candidate is also the closest to the painter himself: one of his daughters. A historical fiction novel called Girl With a Pearl Earring offers a fictionalized account of the creation of the painting in which a humble maid becomes the romantic interest of Vermeer. The novel was adapted into a player and later a film starring Scarlet Johannsen as the maid and Colin Firth as Vermeer.
Some modern theorists believe that the hyperrealism of Vermeer’s work had to have been mechanically aided in some way. Prevailing theories are that he used camera obscura, a technique in which a pinhole camera is used to project an image or curved mirrors to cast pictures onto his canvas for copying.
