Art Analysis: Girl With A Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring is an excellent example of pictorial virtuosity of Vermeer. The face is modeled with velvety softness, so that the chiaroscuro blend; turban and clothes are painted with an infallible and expressive brushwork. Rendered with the utmost delicacy are the small light reflections in the eyes of the girl, on her lower lip and the corner of the mouth, where just a few touches of pink overlapping enough to produce the right effect. The blue band around the head is painted with the technique of wet on wet; the pigment used is expensive ultramarine mixed directly on the canvas and spread with vigorous brushstrokes semicircular, clearly visible. White collar showed a dough stretched out broad brushstrokes, while the jacket is
So, by an alternation of opaque matter and transparent matter, he could make more or less visible the color of the underlying layers. Even the dark background is painted over a black base; Vermeer has then applied a final green translucent glaze that time has long darkened. Two of the most important elements of the painting by Vermeer are the pearl earring and headdress girl, consisting of a yellow cloth held in place by a strip of blue cloth that surrounds the front. The yellow-green jacket is painted so summary that is not easy to distinguish the tissue in which it is made; it is probably one of woolen cloth. This garment is often considered part of the clothing exotic girl, in reality is nothing but a typical jacket of the time: long sleeves, stitched high and a curl on the back were fashionable in the decade 1660-1670, when the portrait was