Girl with a Pearl Earring

A girl turns to look back over her shoulder, lips just parted as if about to speak, a single luminous pearl catching the light at her ear, her exotic blue-and-gold turban glowing against a black void. Vermeer made not a portrait of a known sitter but a 'tronie,' an idealized study of a type, yet the result feels piercingly alive and intimate. Now in the Mauritshuis, the Girl with a Pearl Earring has become one of the most beloved images in art, her direct, unreadable gaze meeting ours across the centuries.