Art History: Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer

By

 

I can’t lie, I just don’t care much for this painting. For me it is alot like the Mona Lisa. It is so ubiqutous that it has no appeal for me. I am not saying it is a bad painting or that it isn’t worth of praise I just think it has oversaturated the market. People have written poems about it and movies have been made about it or focusing on it. Even Banksy riffed on the painting for one of his works. There is clearly something special about it that captures peoples’ attention.

The tronie, a Dutch term for a painting of a head that isn’t a portrait, was done in 1665 by Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer was a Dutch painter who fell into obsurity after his death but an art historian rediscovered his works and he is now considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

The real reason I wanted to highlight this piece is because of the work done by Hirox Europe in 2018. Emilien Leonhardt and Vincent Sabatier used a 3D microscope to create an interactive, 10-billion-pixel panorama of the painting. You can find the 2D version HERE

 

Interactive Scan

2D Scan

 

And here is the Interactive 3D version

3D Scan

 

They documented the process in this YouTube video

 

 

 

 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring
www.micro-pano.com/pearl
www.hirox-europe.com/PEARL/3D
https://www.boredpanda.com/10-billion-pixel-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-painting-vermeer/

Johannes Vermeer – Copied from Mauritshuis website, resampled and uploaded by Crisco 1492 (talk · contribs), October 2014[4], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36351343