Woman with a Pearl Necklace
The Woman with a Pearl Necklace is an oil painting by Jan Vermeer, written 1662-1665. The image is 51.2 inches high and 45.1 inches wide. It now belongs to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Image description
A young woman in profile looking in a small mirror hung next to a stained-glass window. Through the window flows bright sunlight that bathes the narrow curtain and the room in a golden light and the face and upper body of the woman brightly lit. She wears a hermelinverbrämte, hip-length jacket over a yellow silk wrinkled loose skirt that reaches the floor. She is going to judge her pearl necklace, which she wears around her neck. She pulls it apart at both ends, but seems motionless sunk in the mirror in their own sight. She wears precious teardrop-shaped pearl earrings, the ambitious hair is decorated with a rose -colored ribbons. On the table with a heavy double tabletop a heavy cloth that half concealed a precious blue lidded bags. In addition to the cloth is a powder brush.
The image of colored glass in the closed window is barely visible. Presumably it is the same, the Vermeer has clearly moved into his pictures The Glass of Wine and The Girl with the Wineglass (1659 /69), in which the enjoyment of wine plays a role in the picture and that represents an allegory of Temperance.
Importance
The painting illustrates the conflict between vice and virtue, however, is so cautious that this issue is only hinted at. Clothing, powder puff and string of pearls are symbols of the vanity of women. It seems the love of self to subject, while the social norms regarded the humility as a virtue.
Provenance
The earliest evidence of the picture probably dates from 1696, where a Vermeer ( " A young woman is getting dressed, very nice ") and No. 36 is mentioned and sold for 30 guilders. 1809 turned up at an auction at J. Caudri in Amsterdam and was sold for 55 guilders. Two years later it was, ibid, offered again and sold for 36 guilders. It was demonstrably part of the collection H. Grevedon and was acquired from there by Théophile Thoré, who later sold it to the Aachen Industrial Barthold Suermondt. Meanwhile Images collection at the time was the largest German private collection, which contained mainly the works of the northern European schools. In 1874, the image, along with the collection Suermondt, for the Berlin Gemäldegalerie was purchased, where it is still located.
Reception
Sophie Matisse, who has alienated a number of famous paintings in art history by removing people and other living things from the picture, the room and the colors but has retained exactly, also Vermeer has paraphrased Young Lady.
The American writer and art theoretician Mark von Schlegell gives the painting in his book "High Wichita " a central role. In the form of a science fiction detective novel, the novel negotiates - the painting is faithfully replicated in the novel by means of a " quantum castle " - the problem of truth and falsehood, and the questions about the value of art.