JOHANNES VERMEER

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch painter from the Baroque period who specialized in domestic interior scenes from middle class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful painter, mostly recognized in The Hague in the Netherlands. Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and the use of light in his work.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting dated c. 1665, and is considered to be Wermeer’s masterpiece. Going by various names over the centuries, it became known by its present title towards the end of the 20th century because of the large pearl earring worn by the girl in the portrait. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and film enterprises. In 2006, the Dutch public selected it as the most beautiful painting in the Netherlands.

Known as the “Mona Lisa of the North,” this painting represents the best of Dutch art, and has become one of art history’s most beloved paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring portrays a young woman sitting before a dark backdrop. Though seemingly inconsequential, this stark and shallow background beautifully contrasts the figure’s cream-colored skin and translucent eyes, which are fixed on the viewer. In addition to an exquisite blue and yellow turban, she wears a large, tear-shaped pearl earring. Girl with a Pearl Earing is actually known as a tronie, which is a painting of an individual intended to be used as a study. Often, artists opted to portray these figures in “exotic” garments, as rendering opulent fabric allowed them to demonstrate their advanced painting techniques.

A tronie does not depict a specific person. Instead, it shows an anonymous girl dressed in opulent clothing who, “like a vision emanating from the darkness,” art historians Arthur K. Wheelock and Ben Broos explain in the Wermeer catalogue, “belongs to no specific time or place.”

Girl with a Pearl Earring is also a testimony of Vermeer’s advanced technique and mastery of the treatment of light and color. Vermeer is best known for his ability to create contours and forms using light rather than line. This distinctive approach to modeling is particularly evident in the figure’s face, which Vermeer rendered in planes of light and shadow. To achieve this aesthetic, Vermeer followed a meticulous four-step technique popular with 17th-century artists.

Appearing overnight on 20 October 2014, Girl with a Pierced Eardrum marked Banksy's return to his hometown with one of his most accomplished transformations of an art-historical image.

Girl with a Pierced Eardrum

Painted on a building at Albion Dockyard in Hanover Place, close to Bristol's historic harbour, the mural reimagines Johannes Vermeer's celebrated Girl with a Pearl Earring, dated circa 1665. Banksy confirmed the work by publishing a photograph on his website the same day it was discovered.