“The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, an oil painting by Johannes Vermeer, is my favorite art. Johannes Vermeer was born in October 1632. His full name is Jan Vermeer van Delft. Vermeer is dutch and is known for his elegant paintings and his love of pearls. When he was alive he was not very successful but after he died in December 1675 people started recognizing him and he became famous. Two of his masterpieces are “The girl with the pearl earring and “The Milkmaid”. In the remaining part of this essay, I will tell you three reasons why I think “The girl with the earring” is my favorite piece.
First of all, “The girl with the pearl earring” is a very detailed oil painting. I especially like the face. If you look closely at the face, you can see that the girl is standing facing sideways and her head is slightly turned so that you can see it. The eyes are shaped in a way that it looks like she is looking and talking to you. The brightness of the colors going dark to light makes the girl look very realistic. I love this painting mostly because of the girl’s face, which grabbed my attention immediately. There are many other attractive details in this exquisite painting that makes it really special.
The next reason I like it is because there is an interesting background story behind it. The painting by Vermeer is an oil painting and its format is a tronie. At the time of Vermeer, a tronie is an informal drawing of an ordinary person at a specific moment. A portrait is a more formal and sometimes exaggerated drawing of an important person. Although the painting is not a portrait, some people believe that “the girl with the pearl earring is Vermeer’s daughter Maria Vermeer. But we are not certain. Some people call the girl with the pearl earring the North Mona Lisa or the Dutch Mona Lisa. The painting is located in Mauritshuis. Once a curator tried to fix a part of her lip because it seemed as if a part of the color was missing. But after investigating the painting using the x-ray. Other curators had to change it back to how it was before because the missing part was purposeful. The background story is shot. But I like it because I think it is very interesting.
The third reason why I like “The girl with the pearl earring” is that the painting introduced me to pearls and I fell in love with them. When I started researching “The girl with the pearl earring” I found, in an article, that Vermeer loves pearls and that he put them in a lot of his paintings. Vermeer and other people like pearls because the pearls are very rare, and it is not easy to find at the bottom of the sea. People also like pearls because of the beautiful colors and of it’s pretty shiny appearance. In the middle ages, people liked pearls because pearls represented Christian faith.. In the 17th century pearls were a sign of wealth. The pearls in Vermeer's painting were mostly represented as a sign of wealth. The big pearls that Vermeer used in “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” or “Mistress and Maid” were most likely to be fake. Because big and real pearls would be very expensive, and most people couldn’t afford it. Another possibility would be that he used his own imagination, and made the pearls as big as he would want. I love “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” because it brought me to fall in love with pearls.
When I prepared this project, I also searched for other art works on the list and I like some of them too. But the reason I chose “the girl with the pearl earring” as my favorite artwork is because of the realistic details of the painting, the interesting background story about it and how the painting brought me to love pearls. If you also happen to like this painting, you can read the book, “The Girl With the Pearl Earring”, by Tracy Chevalier.
Comentários