The Girl with a Pearl Earring* is universally recognized as one of Johannes Vermeer's absolute masterworks.

The Pearl Vermeer's women are often associated with the pearls eleven of them wear, so much that his oeuvre itself has become synonymous with the pearl. In 1908 Jan Veth articulated a widespread sentiment while observing Girl with a Pearl Earring: "More than with any other VEREMEER one could say that it looks as if it were blended from the dust of crushed pearls."

In the seventeenth-century pearls were probably an extremely important status symbol. "In 1660 Samuel Pepys (an English diarist) paid 4 1/2 pounds for a pearl necklace, and in 1666 he paid 80 pounds for another, which at the time amounted to about 45 and 800 guilders respectively." 1 At about the same time the traveling French art connoisseur Balthasar de Moconys had been shown a single-figured painting by Vermeer which had been paid 600 guilders and that he considered the price outrageous.

"Pearls are linked with vanity but also with virginity - a wide enough iconographic spectrum. The most beautiful pearl in Vermeer's work is undoubtedly that worn by the Girl with a Pearl Earring - a massive creation of highlights and shadows and obscure shadows. The largest know pearl with a perfect skin or "orient" had a circumference of 4 1/2 inches. Artificial pearls were invented by M. Jacquin in France around this time, thin spheres of glass filled with l'essenced'orient, a preparation made of white wax and silvery scales of a river fish called ablette, or bleak, but cultured pearls were also coming in from Venice. This girl of Vermeer's seems to be wearing a glass "drop earring" which has been varnished to look like an immense pearl; such earrings were currently fashionable in Holland, as we see in paintings by Van Mieris, Metsu and Terborch. But Vermeer's pearl is probably doubly artificial, having been enlarged to such a size by the painter's imagination and desire to adorn the girl with something spectacular."

The drop, or tear shaped pearl seen in Girl with a Pearl Earring, was portrayed clearly in eight other canvases by Vermeer: Woman with a Pearl Necklace, Woman with a Lute, The Concert, A Lady Writing, Girl with a Red Hat, A Study of a Young Woman, Mistress and Her Maid, and Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. All of these pictures date from the mid 1660s on.

*Girl with a Pearl Earring ( Meisje met de parel ) c. 1665, oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (44.5 x 39 cm.) The Hague, The Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis