Ethiopian American Awol Erizku recreated the painting as a print in 2009, centering a young black woman and replacing the pearl earring with bamboo earrings as a commentary on the lack of black figures in museums and galleries. The painting also appeared in the 2007 film St Trinian’s, when a group of unruly schoolgirls steal it to raise funds to save their school.įellow artists went on to put Vermeer’s painting to iconic use in the 21st century. The novel later inspired the 2003 film and 2008 play of the same name. There, Vermeer becomes close to a servant whom he uses as an assistant and has sit for him as a model while wearing his wife’s earrings. Tracy Chevalier’s 1999 historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring fictionalized the circumstances of the painting’s creation.
#The girl with the pearl earring movie
A journalist takes a photo of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, Netherlands – Photo: Michel Porro/Getty Images Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth from Girl with a Pearl Earring movie by Peter Webber – Photo: Jaap Buitendijk for Pathe Films
She had to renounce to basically all their properties and will, so his work ended up in hands of his creditors. As a result, he was highly in debt and, according to his wife, all those pressures sickened him and caused his death. Wealthy people stopped buying his work due to the economic crisis caused by the Franco-Dutch War of 1672. What it’s known is that he was a famous artist in his small town of Delft in the Netherlands, but since most of his paintings were actually bought by his main patron to decorate his house, he didn’t really have an international acknowledgment.Īnother crucial factor to understand the mystery behind the model’s identity can be traced to the last years of Vermeer’s life. Very little is known about the artist’s life, so we can’t even know if his model even existed. Known as “the Mona Lisa of the North”, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring over the years has become one of the most iconic artworks in history. Girl with a Pearl Earring – Johannes Vermeer (1665-1666)