The archive / Baroque / Girl with a Pearl Earring
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Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer · 1632–1675
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3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. 300 DPI · sRGB · personal-use license.
Museum-quality giclée on Hahnemühle German Etching — heavyweight 310gsm, acid-free, velvety matte. Made to order & shipped.
Sizes in the download
Ready-to-print files at every size below — each drops straight into a standard frame at 300 DPI, nothing cropped:
Each of these also prints big-wall at 150 DPI — up to about 36″ on the short side (so the 24×36″ becomes 36×54″), for a step-back view. Or print the borderless master, the full-resolution scan, sharp to about A0.
The work
She was never a real person.
This is not a portrait but a tronie — a painting of an imaginary figure rather than a study of someone who sat for it. Vermeer gives us a girl in exotic dress, wearing an oriental turban and an improbably large pearl in her ear.
Look closer
The most precious thing here is the blue.
For the girl's headscarf Vermeer used unusually large amounts of high-quality ultramarine, a pigment ground from lapis lazuli that in the 17th century was more valuable than gold.
Why it matters
What you see today is not quite what Vermeer painted.
The 2018 'Girl in the Spotlight' technical study found that the now-dark background was originally a green curtain, and that Vermeer painted fine eyelashes around the eyes that are nearly invisible to the naked eye today. The painting has hung in the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902, bequeathed by the heirless collector Des Tombe.
It's surprising how much high quality ultramarine Vermeer used in the girl's headscarf. This blue pigment was more valuable than gold in the 17th century.— Abbie Vandivere, Mauritshuis conservator, 'Girl in the Spotlight' project lead, 2018
The file & the facts
- Title
- Girl with a Pearl Earring
- Artist
- Johannes Vermeer
- Year
- c. 1665
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original
- 44.5 × 39 cm
- Collection
- Mauritshuis, The Hague
- Rights
- Open access · personal use
- File
- 300 DPI · sRGB · JPEG
