Jan Vermeer | Girl with a Pearl Earring

About Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer

Vermeer painted this around 1665 in Delft, and it is not a portrait. It is a tronie — a Dutch genre of the period in which a painter studied a character or an expression rather than recording a particular person. Nobody knows who sat for it, or whether anyone did.

She turns towards the viewer out of pure darkness, wearing a blue and gold turban that belonged to no Dutch wardrobe of the 1660s. There is no room behind her, no furniture, no window — which is unusual for Vermeer, who normally built his figures into carefully lit interiors. The background was originally a deep green glaze; it has darkened over three centuries into the black void we see now.

The painting was bought at auction in 1881 for around two guilders, filthy and heavily overpainted. It hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague and has been examined more closely than almost any other picture — a 2018 research project found eyelashes, invisible to the naked eye, along the edge of her upper lid.

Girl with a Pearl Earring at a glance

• Artist: Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675)
• Painted: c. 1665, Delft
• Movement: Dutch Golden Age
• Original: Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Medium: Oil on canvas, 44.5 × 39 cm

Common questions about Girl with a Pearl Earring

Own a hand-painted Girl with a Pearl Earring

This is not a print. Every painting we sell is reproduced in oils on canvas, by hand, by professional artists — no giclée, no computer-generated technique.

Everything in this picture turns on three or four points of pure lead white — the highlight on the pearl, the wet gleam on her lower lip, the catchlight in each eye. In the original those dabs sit physically raised above the surrounding paint, which is why the pearl reads as luminous rather than merely pale. Printed flat, they become light-grey dots and the effect collapses. Painted by hand in oils, the highlights stand up off the canvas again and the pearl does what Vermeer built it to do.

• A range of sizes — choose yours above. The original is unusually small, and the composition holds up well at modest scale.
• Framed and ready to hang, gallery wrap, or rolled canvas if you would rather frame it yourself.
• 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions.
• Free delivery Australia-wide. Australian owned and operated, with a local contact you can actually reach.

Framing Options: You have 3 choices

Option 1. Choose an outer frame - see images below.

You only need to choose one and the painting will be sent to you framed and ready to hang.

* Below is an example of a customer who chose the Gold Ornate frame

Option 2: Choose a Gallery Wrap Stretched Painting.

If you want the frameless modern gallery wrap look then you only need to choose Stretched Gallery Wrap from the finish option dropdown.

You receive your stretched gallery wrap painting ready to hang - with a hanging wire attached behind.

The back of the Stretched Gallery Wrap looks like the image below - it has a hanging wire!

Option 3: Choose Canvas Only if you want to frame the painting yourself.

Your painting will be sent to you in an art tube - you can then frame it yourself or take it to your local framer.