The Girl: the most famous painting the world (2024)

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (1)

People travel to The Hague from all over the world to see Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the flesh. But what makes her so special?

Told by

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (2)

Abbie Vandivere

Conservator

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (3)

Janice Deul

Fashion activist

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (4)

Tracy Chevalier

Writer

People travel to The Hague from all over the world to see Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the flesh. Or dream of coming here. They buy posters, fridge magnets and socks bearing her image. They set her as the desktop image on their computer, watch the film with Scarlett Johansson and read Tracy Chevalier’s novel. Or they dress up as the Girl.

But why is she so famous? We don’t know why exactly. We do have some theories, but we can’t explain it entirely. And maybe we don’t really want to – a little mystery suits the Girl.

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Everyone their own Girl

Every world-famous artwork has one thing in common: it is extremely well made. This is true of our Girl too. Just look at the light that Vermeer painted. It falls softly on the girl’s face, making her eyes sparkle and the pearl earring gleam. Or at the vivid colours in front of the dark background: the fresh blue of her headdress, the greeny-yellow of her jacket and the red of her lips.

Vermeer painted the girl without any hard lines. We call this technique sfumato, the Italian word for smoky or blurred. This means that all kinds of details are missing, such as the hook for the earring – Vermeer did not paint that at all. And where does her nose turn into her cheek? So you can see more than Vermeer actually painted: your brain fills in the details so subtly that you don’t even notice it happening. But this also means that everyone sees something different and that we each have our own Girl.

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All audio clips

Our conservator on the Girl

We don’t know who posed for Girl with a Pearl Earring. But we do know quite a lot about the painting itself. This is because we have conducted extensive research into the painting in recent years, using the very latest techniques to do so. We found answers to questions about how Vermeer painted the Girl.Which pigments did he use and where did they come from? Did Vermeer make a sketch before he started painting? And is there anything to say about that dark background?

The research was conducted by a team of internal and external experts, and was led by one of the Mauritshuis conservators: Abbie Vandivere. Let her tell you all about the research into the Girl.

All audio clips

  • Abbie Vandivere

    Conservator

    The Girl: the most famous painting the world (9)

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (10)

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (11)

The biggest 3D-print of the Girl

The largest ever 3D print of a painting is currently on view at the Mauritshuis. It’s 4 meters tall: the real painting of the Girl with a Pearl Earring could fit inside 100 times. In this video, you can watch the Girl’s eye being printed in layers, each half the thickness of a human hair.

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The biggest 3D-print of the Girl

Abbie visits Clemens at Canon Production Printing to admire the first print of the Girl.

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (13)

Vlog-series about researching the Girl

Two years of research was conducted by a team of internal and external experts, and was led by one of the Mauritshuis conservators: Abbie Vandivere. Let her tell you all about the research into the Girl.

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (14)

Visual Effects

1.47 min

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (15)

Steps of Vermeer

The painter worked systematically from the background to the foreground: after painting the greenish background and the skin of the Girl’s face, he then successively applied her yellow jacket, white collar, headscarf and ‘pearl’.

1.16 min

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Pigments

The research identified and accurately mapped Vermeer’s colour palette in this painting for the first time. The raw materials for the colours came from all over the world.

3.19 min

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (17)

Changes

The new research revealed that Vermeer made changes to the composition during the painting process: the position of the ear, the top of the headscarf and the back of the neck were shifted.

2.28 min

What dit she look like?

What might the Girl have looked like when the painting was on Vermeer’s easel in 1655? Use the slider on the digital visualisation to compare “then and now”. The video shows us the steps that Vermeer took to paint the Girl and how she has changed over time.

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Timelapse

In this timelapse you can discover how the painting was created and changed over time.

Get to know the Girl better

Feeling inspired to get to know the painting better and zoom in on all kinds of details? See and read more about the Girl here.

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Who’s that girl?

Rather than a portrait, Vermeer painted an idealised girl’s face. A girl from Delft probably posed as the model, but Vermeer painted her wearing a headdress that wouldn’t have been worn by Dutch women at that time. This made the painting even more fascinating to look at. Vermeer turned his model into a kind of supermodel.

Paintings like this were called ‘tronies’ in the 17th century. This work was then described a ‘tronie painted in the Turkish style’ or a ‘tronie in the antique style’.

The fun of an anonymous girl like this is that you, the viewer, can decide who she is. What’s her background? What does she do? What does she worry about? What are her dreams? You can fill it all in for yourself. The best-known story about this girl is by Tracy Chevalier. She wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring and named the girl Griet. The book was turned into a film starring Scarlett Johansson.

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (20)

All audio clips

  • Tracy Chevalier

    Writer

    The Girl: the most famous painting the world (21)

  • Janice Deul

    Fashion activist

    The Girl: the most famous painting the world (22)

The Girl: the most famous painting the world (23)

Spinvis - Parel

Musician Spinvis was inspired by the Girl and wrote a special song. It was also kind of exciting as he said: "It may seem a very obvious choice to write a song about. But I felt a bit hesitant about it too, since it is such a classic, world-famous work"

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The Girl as a role model

Vermeer’s Girl appeals to many people. She inspires them to look, and look again. To read, invent and daydream. And to make: the Girl sparks creativity in lots of people. She inspires them to paint, graffiti, write love songs and make portraits, embroideries and cupcakes. If the Girl were a girl of flesh and blood, you would be forgiven for thinking that everyone was in love with her. Discover why fashion activist Janice Deul is so attracted to the Girl

#My Girl with a Pearl

February 6 - June 4, 2023

In February 2023, our world-famous and most beloved masterpiece, Johannes Vermeer'sGirl with a Pearl Earring, was on loan to the Rijksmuseum for eight weeks for the Johannes Vermeer exhibition. Yet the spirit of the Girl never left the Vermeer room....

For 5 months creatives all over the world had the chance to be displayed in a digital frame in the Girl’s original spot in the Vermeer room. A very desirable spot where hundreds of people a day admired your versions of our Girl.

The presentationMy Girl with a Pearlshows that theGirlis recognizable in everything and everyone. In a son or daughter, in buttons, an iron or just a few swipes of a brush.

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More stories

There is a lot to tell about the paintings of the Mauritshuis. Together with experts from outside the museum, we're gathering the most engaging stories about our collection.

Art story for kids A museum full of animals You might expect only paintings of chic ladies and gentlemen with big, white collars in our museum (and there are some), but we also have lots of animal paintings. Because animals and people, they belong together. And that was also the case in the past.
Art story Johan Maurits The Mauritshuis was built as a residence for Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. Who was this man?
The Girl: the most famous painting the world (2024)
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