Girl With a Pearl Earring

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Chevalier's research included reading the history of the period, studying the paintings of Vermeer and his peers, and spending several days in Delft. [2] Pregnant at the time of researching and writing, she finished the work in eight months because she had a "biological deadline". [3] Plot [ edit ] Her father explains to Griet that she is to be a maid for the famous painter Vermeer. Cleaning his studio will be one of her main tasks. It is 1664, in the city of Delft, H Originally, the American actress Kate Hudson was cast as Griet, [10] having successfully pursued the role from the film's producers. In September 2001, however, Hudson pulled out four weeks before filming began, officially due to "creative differences". [14] [15] Hudson's decision scuppered the production and led to the loss of financial support from the production company Intermedia. It also resulted in the withdrawal of Mike Newell as director and Ralph Fiennes as Vermeer; Fiennes left the project to work on his 2002 film Maid in Manhattan. [5] Due to this incident, The Guardian reported that it "now seems unlikely that the film will ever be made". [14] Scarlett Johansson bleached her eyebrows to better resemble the subject of Vermeer's painting. [8]

Rizq, Rosemary (August 2005). "Finding the self in mind: Vermeer and reflective function". Psychodynamic Practice. 11 (3): 255–268. doi: 10.1080/14753630500232156. S2CID 144813929. In his feature film debut, Webber sought to avoid employing traditional characteristics of the period film drama. [4] In a 2003 interview with IGN, he said, "What I was scared of is ending up with something that was like Masterpiece Theatre, [that] very polite Sunday evening BBC kind of thing, and I [was] determined to make something quite different from that ...". Cinematographer Eduardo Serra used distinctive lighting and colour schemes similar to Vermeer's paintings. Lestienne, Cécile (21 July 2014). "Grounded: the great art treasures that no longer go out on the road". the Guardian . Retrieved 6 October 2015. Graafland, Kees (9 December 2014). "Meisje met de parel draagt helemaal geen parel"[Girl with a pearl earring doesn't wear a pearl at all]. AD (in Dutch). The girl in the painting is positioned slightly off-centre, and this creates a sense of balance in the painting. Vermeer uses the girl’s gaze to draw the viewer’s attention to her face. The girl’s head is turned slightly to the side, and this creates a sense of movement in the painting. Vermeer also uses the girl’s clothing to create a sense of texture in the painting. The girl is wearing a turban-like headscarf, and this creates a sense of movement and texture.Jenkins, Mark (8 October 2009). "St. Trinian's Girls Aren't As Bad As They Wanna Be". NPR . Retrieved 9 December 2014. But it's not a good sign when a book's most compelling moments revolve around two people grinding pigments. And, no: "Grinding pigments" is not a euphemism for artist-bangin'. It is, quite literally, referring to the detailed descriptions of how paint was made in the days before those fancy metal tubes replaced pig bladders as the paint-storing vessels of choice. Griet had not been told that she is to become the painter Vermeer’s maid, her mother only revealing the job to her after the Vermeer’s had already been, inspected Griet, and left. Griet has no say in the matter. Her father was a tile painter before a tragic accident, in which a kiln explosion claimed his eyes and trade. The family who were already struggling, treading water, now find themselves slowly slipping beneath the surface. Griet is increasingly fascinated by Vermeer's paintings. Vermeer discovers that Griet has an eye for art and secretly asks her to run errands and perform tasks for him, such as mixing and grinding colors for his paints and acting as a substitute model. This takes up much of her time, and Griet arouses the suspicions of Catharina, but Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, recognizes Griet's presence as a steadying and catalyzing force in Vermeer's career and connives at the domestic arrangements that allow her to devote more time to his service. However, Griet is warned by Vermeer's friend, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, not to get too close to the artist because he is more interested in painting than he is in people. Realizing that this is true, Griet remains cautious.

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You chose to give your novel the same title as the painting. Is there a greater purpose for this? What sort of a relationship do you see the novel and the painting having? Becoming a maid casts doubt on Griet's respectability because of the bad reputation that maids have for stealing, spying and sleeping with their employers. It is not revealed how much of this reputation is earned. Chevalier answers all of these questions, and more, by creating a young girl named Griet. After her father, a tile maker, is blinded in a kiln accident Griet is sent to work cleaning in the house of Vermeer in the Dutch city of Delft. She is Protestant and the Vermeers are Catholic, which adds another element of strangeness to the young girl when she moves into the house. Vermeer's wife, Catharina, is about to deliver another baby, and Griet is to help with the household work. But she is also given the job of cleaning the master's studio, where she faces the daunting task of cleaning the objects on display without moving them from their position.

Such considerations are important since, as Lisa Fletcher argues, historical novels "intervene in our view of the past" and influence our reaction to it in the present. Thus it was noted that the 2001 exhibition of “Vermeer and the Delft School” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York "attracted almost twice the number of visitors than the Vermeer exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1996. For Walter Liedtke, the gallery's curator of European paintings, the success of [the exhibition] was due, at least in part, to Chevalier's novel." [18] See also [ edit ] Ruhlmann, William. "Artist Biography by William Ruhlmann". AllMusic. All Media Network . Retrieved 3 March 2014.Susman, Gary (19 September 2001). "Shining stars". Entertainment Weekly. Time Warner . Retrieved 23 February 2014. It isn’t a true story. No one knows who the girl is, or in fact who any of the people in his paintings are. Very little is known about Vermeer—he left no writings, not even any drawings, just 35 paintings. The few known facts are based on legal documents—his baptism, his marriage, the births of his children, his will. I was careful to be true to the known facts; for instance, he married Catharina Bolnes and they had eleven surviving children. Other facts are not so clear-cut and I had to make choices: he may or may not have lived in the house of his mother-in-law (I decided he did); he converted to Catholicism at the time of his marriage but not necessarily because Catharina was Catholic (I decided he did); he may have been friends with the scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who invented the microscope (I decided he was). But there was a lot I simply made up.