Jan or Johannes Vermeer van Delft, b. October 1632, d. December 1675, a Dutch genre painter who lived and worked in Delft, created some of the most exquisite paintings in Western art. Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colors, sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is also named Het Meisje met de Parel. The painting Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's masterworks and as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a focal point. The painting is currently housed at The Mauritshuis in The Hague. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa".

The Girl with a Pearl Earring is universally recognized as one of Johannes Vermeer's absolute masterworks. After more than a century of study, the work still poses significant questions. Who was the sitter and was the painting even intended as a portrait? Why had it remained in complete obscurity until it was rediscovered in 1882 and sold for the price of a reproduction? Was it a part of a pendant? Did Vermeer sell the painting during his lifetime? Why was the original background a deep transparent green rather than the black we see today? Was the pearl a real one? What significance did the turban have? Which painting procedures did Vermeer employ? Which pigments did he use?

In general, very little is known about Vermeer and his works. This painting is signed "IVMeer" but not dated. It is unclear whether this work was commissioned, and if so, by whom. In any case, it is probably not meant as a conventional portrait. More recent Vermeer literature points to the image being a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a ’head’ that was not meant to be a portrait. After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994 the subtle colour scheme and the intimacy of the girl’s gaze on to the spectator have been greatly enhanced.

In 1937, a very similar painting, Smiling Girl, at the time also thought to be by Vermeer, was donated by collector Andrew W. Mellon to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It is now widely considered to be a fake. Vermeer expert Arthur Wheelock claimed in a 1995 study that it is by twentieth-century artist and forger Theo van Wijngaarden, a friend of Han van Meegeren. On the advice of Victor de Stuers, who for years tried to prevent Vermeer's rare works from being sold to parties abroad, A.A. des Tombe purchased the work at an auction in the Hague in 1881, for only two guilders and thirty cents. At the time, it was in poor condition. Des Tombe had no heirs and donated this and other paintings to the Mauritshuis in 1902.

Why is the Girl with the pearl earring Vermeer’s best-loved painting? It must have something to do with the fact that the girl looks over her shoulder, as though hoping to see who is standing behind her. This draws the viewer into the picture, suggesting that he is the one who has made the girl turn her head.

A golden rectangle is a rectangle whose side lengths are in the golden ratio, one-to-phi, that is, approximately 1:1.618. A distinctive feature of this shape is that when a square section is removed, the remainder is another golden rectangle, that is, with the same proportions as the first. Square removal can be repeated infinitely, which leads to an approximation of the golden or Fibonacci spiral.

Equally important, though, are Vermeer’s fresh colours, virtuoso technique and subtle rendering of light effects. The turban is enlivened, for example, with the small highlights that are Vermeer’s trademark. The pearl, too, is very special, consisting of little more than two brushstrokes: a bright accent at its upper left and the soft reflection of the white collar on its underside. Then there is the girl herself, who gazes at us, wide-eyed, her sensual mouth parted. She makes an uninhibited, somewhat expectant impression that cannot help exciting our interest, even though we have no idea who she is.