Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer · c. 1665

Not a portrait but a tronie — a Dutch genre study of an imagined sitter. Vermeer models the face in soft wet-in-wet glazes and renders the pearl as just two dabs of lead-tin white on a grey base. The turban’s blue is ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli, the most expensive pigment of the age.

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