Dutch painter of Girl with a Pearl Earring
A painter of the Dutch Golden Age who left very few works, unknown in his lifetime, rediscovered and crowned a master only nearly two centuries after his death. He painted the quiet corners of ordinary homes: a maid pouring milk, a woman reading a letter. His command of light was uncanny, gilding the everyday hush with a pearl-like glow. The backward glance of Girl with a Pearl Earring is called "the Mona Lisa of the North."
In Girl with a Pearl Earring, a girl glances back out of a dark ground, her lips just parted, a pearl at her ear catching a soft light. Who she is, what she is thinking — the painting says nothing, and it is exactly this blank that has kept her, like the Mona Lisa, an object of speculation for centuries. With the most everyday of glances, Vermeer painted the hardest thing of all: the instant of someone about to speak.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.