English: Girl With a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer is one of the most famous Dutch painters of the 17th century. He is famous for his intimate household scenes with amazing light. In other paintings by Vermeer, such as the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, he managed to create a calm, almost timeless atmosphere.

Jan Vermeer, (1632-1675), was a Dutch painter. He was especially skilled at painting simply furnished domestic interiors in which young, middle-class men and women talk, drink, or play musical instruments. Vermeer is also known for paintings of individual female figures quietly performing simple tasks before a mirror or a window, such as reading a letter or holding a pitcher. He placed his figures close to the viewer in relatively simplified composition. Many of his subjects appear caught in tranquil moments of concentration.

With Rembrandt and Frans Hals, Vermeer ranks among the most admired of all Dutch artists, but he was much less well known in his own day and remained relatively obscure until the end of the nineteenth century.

The life and art of Johannes Vermeer are closely associated with the city of Delft. He was born in Delft in 1632 and lived there until his death in 1675.

Today, the name Vermeer instantly conjures an image of his Girl with the Pearl Earring painting, known as the "Mona Lisa of the North." The 17th century Dutch Master's rendition of an ordinary girl, sublimely glancing at the viewer from a mysterious black background with a shining pearl upon her lobe, has become a universal icon in the canon of Dutch Golden Age artwork.

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.

Editorial by Google Arts & Culture.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is Vermeer’s most famous painting. It is not a portrait, but a ‘tronie’ – a painting of an imaginary figure. Tronies depict a certain type or character; in this case a girl in exotic dress, wearing an oriental turban and an improbably large pearl in her ear.

The novel centers on Griet, the Protestant daughter of a Delft tile painter who lost his sight in a kiln accident. In order to bring income to her struggling family, Griet must work as a maid for a more financially sound family. When Jan Vermeer and his wife approve of Griet as a maid for their growing Catholic household, she leaves home and quickly enters adult life.