Girl with the Pearl Earring

Vermeer’s paintings are known across the world to people who have an artistic eye. In the novel The Girl with the Pearl Earrings Griet is the maid in Vermeer’s house hold. The family feels that he should paint faster so he can earn more money. Griet secretly becomes Vermeer’s assistant as well as his inspiration for his next famous painting. Vermeer’s paintings are more than just paint on a canvas it tells a story, it’s inspirational and says a lot for a painting.

The novel helped me to understand Vermeer as a painter. By reading the novel I now know how creatively he uses his paints to create a master piece. In his painting there is depth and light. In his painting, Woman with a Water Jug he focuses his attention on the right amount of lighting to create perfection. He gives the painting an amazing realness. The way Vermeer takes his time to make his painting into perfection, I have a new appreciation for paintings. Vermeer uses different paints to make different colors, so once you look at the painting you may see one color but really he uses many different colors to create the color that we see. Like for instance if you look at the Woman with the water jugs hat we see it as white but if you look at it long and hard you will see that the hat is painted with blue, yellow, and violet but Vermeer paints it so we see white. That takes a gentle hand and patients.

Examining the painting made me view the paintings like Griet did in the novel. Viewing the painting made me realize what inspirited the author Tracy Chevalier to write this novel. The painting itself shows a mysteriousness to it and the painting of the Girl with the Pearl Earrings facial expression made Tracy want to create a story about the dramatization on her face. The Woman with the Water Jug is just as graceful as the Girl with the Pearl Earrings as Tracy tried to portray it in the novel.

Vermeer’s paintings make people look outside the box rather than just looking at the painting blandly. In the novel Griet was Vermeer’s inspiration that he has been looking for. The novel and painting are insync. Now we can all imagine how Vermeer creates his master pieces.