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Seductive and mysterious Girl with a pearl earring It has been the brand image of the museum for decades Mauritshuisbut it was never so much The girl in the Spotlight (“The girl in the spotlight”) as in the past two years.
This research program, which the Hague Museum launched in February 2018 to better understand the portrait of Johannes Vermeer that has been on display since 1881 and is today one of the most famous paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, has now reached its end, although it left, as usual in any scientific project with ambition and rigor, many unanswered questions.
We still don’t know who this girl is who seems to have hopelessly enthralled Vermeer, but the multi-disciplinary team led by Abbie Vandivere, the museum’s chief painting curator, is now in a position to say that the artist came to paint her eyelashes and put a green curtain in the background, which has completely disappeared to make way for a dark and empty space. It was also learned, for example, that the artist, very demanding when preparing his paintings, did not look at expenses and bought pigments from England, Mexico or Afghanistan (the blue he wears in his scarf) The girl was made of lapis lazuli, a rock that it was more precious than gold in the second half of the 17th century).
The topic of eyelashes seems small, but it has been the subject of debate among experts over the years, since there are those who argue that their absence can mean, as the conservative Mauritshuis recalls in a video available on site the museum which Girl with a pearl earring (c. 1665) is not a portrait of a real young woman, but an abstraction, the representation of an idealized woman. “Our discoveries make Girl more “personal” than previously thought, “he continues.
“We managed to discover many things about the materials and techniques that Vermeer used, but we still don’t know for sure who this girl is,” admits Abbie Vandivere, quoted here by the British newspaper. The Guardian “It is good that some mysteries remain and that everyone can speculate. This gives each of us the possibility of establishing a very personal relationship with painting, with the way our eyes meet hers. ”
For the conservative who was in charge of the work, an operation that involved technicians from various institutions, such as the universities of Antwerp, Delft and Maastricht, the National Gallery of Washington and the Dutch Institute for Conservation, Art and Science, which has the know to do From the Rijksmuseum -, the enigmatic side of this painting is what keeps it eternally “fresh” and “stimulating”.
Change your mind
This time there was no restoration intervention “because the paint is stabilized”, guarantees Vandivere, but that did not prevent the paint samples collected 25 years ago from being analyzed again and that all the work was analyzed down to the smallest detail using techniques. non-invasive images (which do not require touching the surface of the paint), such as x-ray, infrared reflectography, digital microscopy, or macro-X-ray fluorescence, allowing scientists to access what the visible layer is hiding.
Thanks to them, the paint conservator and her team can now safely say that the artist has changed his mind several times when executing the paint. “Research shows that Vermeer made changes to his composition while painting: the position of the ear, the top of the scarf on the head and the base of the neck have changed,” says the statement summarizing the project published by the Dutch museum. .
The same technology, which has evolved enormously in the last 25 years, has allowed the various stages of work execution to be identified, from the preparatory layer to what would be the final version when Vermeer finished it (if it did). “The painter systematically worked towards the foreground: after painting the greenish background and the skin of the face of the GirlHe continued with the yellow coat, the white collar, the headscarf and the ‘pearl’, leaving for the end the signature that is barely seen and here and there the hairs stick to the painting.
The word pearl appears intentionally in quotation marks because the alleged pendant that gives it its name is, after all, a trick of the painter: “The ‘pearl’ is an illusion – opaque and translucent hints of white paint –, it was not [sequer] he painted the clasp that would tie it to his ear. “
Some experts have long argued that the pearl is actually a metal pendant, probably silver or varnished Venetian glass, by the way, Vermeer paints the light reflected from it. What will they say now that it has been concluded that the earring, whatever the material, does not exist?
Regardless of the reaction of the community of conservators and art historians to the discoveries of the project. The girl in the spotlightIt is true that the study of work will not stop here. The museum director says this is just one stop on a journey that will bring us closer and closer to the Girl by Vermeer, a painter who portrayed like few others a certain 17th century female universe.
