Girl with a Pearl Earring...

9:00 a.m.

02/28/22 - What we write today is not a review of an exhibition or a museum, but an experience lived in relation to an emblematic work of art from the 17th century belonging to one of the most admired and studied artists in the history of Art. We are talking about Johannes Vermeer and his painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. We have no doubt that it is the best known and most famous painting by the artist and we already know that it is not a portrait as they wanted us to believe in the many novels about it. It is actually a tronie, a painting based on an imaginary figure. The tronies are identified as paintings that artists created to demonstrate their skills in the use of brushes to represent fabrics, especially silks, either on clothing or on the head. In the case of this exotic young woman with a turban and an earring with a gigantic pearl, Vermeer shows us that he was a master in the handling of light and in the representation of the lips, in the color of the young woman's face and, obviously, in the sheen of pearl.

But as we announced at the beginning, this painting, which is on display in The Hague (Netherlands) in the small Mauritshuis Museum, caused us some disappointment. We are not referring to the skill of the artist but to the conservation of the painting. We expected to see the young woman a bit affected by the passage of time and not with the excessive shine of the varnish used to preserve it. Anyway we were amazed and happy to finally meet face to face with the young woman and obviously with her pearl.