In 1881, a dirty, neglected painting came up at an auction in The Hague. A collector named Arnoldus des Tombe bought it for two guilders, plus thirty cents in commission, a few dollars in today's money. His friend Victor de Stuers, an expert, recognized it as a Vermeer, and politely agreed not to bid against him. It was Girl with a Pearl Earring, now one of the most famous faces in art.
Vermeer painted it around 1665 in Delft, and it is not a portrait. It is a tronie, a Dutch type of picture that studied an expression or a costume instead of a particular person. The model has never been identified, and the turban, an exotic fashion in Dutch painting, was a prop. Des Tombe died in 1902 and left the painting to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it has stayed.
Then there is the pearl itself. It is huge, and it is painted with only a few strokes: a bright highlight, a soft reflection at the bottom, and almost nothing connecting them. Some researchers argue it is too big to be a real pearl and may represent polished tin or glass. A study in 2018 found other changes, including traces of a dark green curtain behind her that has since darkened to black, and tiny eyelashes that have almost disappeared.
The painting's blue turban is natural ultramarine, made from ground lapis lazuli imported from what is now Afghanistan, and one of the most expensive pigments available. Vermeer spent heavily on it.
Its fame is modern. A 1999 novel by Tracy Chevalier imagined the story of the model, and a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson made her a pop icon. She turns over her shoulder and looks straight at you, and that glance does the rest.
Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring appears on our: