Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl with a Pearl Earring has drawn much attention over the Centuries. In fact, Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the most famous pieces of art ever created. Hollywood increased the painting’s popularity in 2003 when it starred Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth in a major motion picture named after the work of art. Four years before the release of the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring, author Tracy Chevalier published a novel with the same title.
Have you read the novel Girl with a Pearl Earring or seen the film? If so, you’ll be interested in the fun facts about Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece painting listed below.
6 Fun Facts About Girl with a Pearl Earring
1) The girl in the painting has yet to be identified. No one really knows who the model was in Girl with a Pearl Earring.
2) There is no concrete evidence supporting this claim, but the model in the painting may have been Vermeer’s oldest daughter, Maria.
3) There are other names for this masterpiece painting. They include Girl in a Turban, Head of a Girl in a Turban, Head of a Young Girl, and The Young Girl with Turban. We’re not sure about your preference, but we prefer the title that has stuck with the masterpiece painting for hundreds of years.
4) Girl with a Pearl Earring is housed in The Hague (in the collection of Mauritshuis), and has been for over a Century.
5) The background color of the painting has changed over time. According to Kristy Puchko, “It’s black background was once a glossy green. Modern restorations of the painting found trace amounts of indigo and weld, a glaze mixture that would have made the dark underpainting glisten. Over the centuries, pigments in the glaze have broken down to change the painting’s color.”
6) The painting didn’t sell until two Centuries had passed after its creation. (It sold in 1881.) What’s more, Dutch Army officer and art collector Arnoldus Andries des Tombe bought Girl with a Pearl Earring for an insanely low price – just 2 guilders. (A guilder is worth 100 cents.)
Note: The facts listed above were adapted from the article 15 Lovely Facts About Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Are you a fan of Johannes Vermeer’s work? If so, you can recreate Vermeer’s artwork, including his masterpiece painting titled Girl with a Pearl Earring. How? By using a digital paint-by-numbers pattern to create printable works of art in the style of Johannes Vermeer. Get the Johannes Vermeer paint-by-numbers pattern today. Don’t forget to download a FREE 10-day trial of SegPlay PC, the computer program that corresponds with the pattern. At this time, SegPlay PC is compatible with Windows PC.
Is Girl with a Pearl Earring your favorite masterpiece painting? If not, what is? We’d love to hear from you, so leave a comment for us in the section below!
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