This picture is a modern spoof on the world famous painting by the 16th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. The girl in the legendary painting (as well as in several other of his paintings) is his second daughter, Elizabeth! Vermeer never hired models — he painted only family and friends. It doesn’t take a cosmetic surgeon to compare the features of the women in the majority of his paintings to observe that the same women are being painted in their own home, again and again in different poses, settings, lighting and clothing. Most of his paintings feature his wife, Catharina, who was not only his constant accomplice in creating a family, she was his foremost ally in his life as an artist!
The painting named (by others), “Girl with a pearl earring”, as well as “The girl with a red hat”, and “The girl with a flute”, and others, are all of his second daughter, Elizabeth, who was a teenager when they were painted. He used her as the model for a series of very small “tronie” or facial portraits, which were popular at the time.
These miniature “head shots” were especially well suited to the use of the camera obscura to create what we know now to have a photographic quality, rendering the light and perspective differently than the unaided lens of the human eye perceives it.
To learn all of the details about the women who posed for Johannes Vermeer in all of his famous paintings, read the book VERMEER: PORTRAITS OF A LIFETIME, by Lawrence R. Spencer.
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