To post or not to post
While I have been mesmerized by the mere simplicity of the girl with the pearl earring for years. I was rendered speechless once I decided to write about it. You would think I have a lot to say after obsessing over it for 5 years.
But upon further research, I found many like me were awestruck by the girl in the painting.
One research concluded the earring was, in fact, a polished tin and not pearl at all. But I found it equally mesmerizing it’s not actually the pearl you’re looking at its the eyes and the colour.
One said something about her being seductive, I was almost ready for a rant where women are sexualised over little to nothing just for having the organs we have and standing and looking behind at the painter. Never in my obsession with this painting for the last 5 years have I ever thought of her to be seductive and for her to have an affair with the painter. But there is a more deranged in-depth hypothesis about it online if you’re into it.
But then I read about Vermeer, the painter and how he is only known to have made 36 paintings as compared to his peers who made hundreds in their lifetime. Intricate paintings, delicate art forms, stories woven in their every brushstroke but Vermeer chose to make ordinary people doing ordinary things.
The girl with the pearl earring was the only one where his subject wasn’t necessarily doing anything and was aware of the fact that she was being painted. Looking through, almost posing. This could be a fleeting moment where she made a conversation with the artist and he immortalised her.
I thought I could also talk about the fact that no one knows who she is, she’s called the ‘Mona Lisa of the North’ but she remains a house-help, not a muse. She remains unknown, not infamous for being someone’s wife or love affair.
But the fact remains I chose this painting because it’s called the girl with the pearl earring and I too was just trying to take a picture with a new earring, a fairly unusual affair for me but quite ordinary.
Just like Vermeer, I realised not everything has to be an overly complicated affair.
This painting can be a 1600’s candid and I can post a picture without having to dwell too much into the why’s and what’s.