'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Tracy Chevalier

This book is about what people see or perceive through art, through love, through hate, through bigotry, through blindness and through hunger

Most of the time, I read a book long before I watch the movie.  I can think of few exceptions.  'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is one of them.  I thought the film was lovely.  I did not even think about a novel as I did not realize there was a novel.  In any case, that was several years ago.  And now I have read this wonderful book.

I think, like most people, I take for granted that what I see and what I perceive are the same thing.  Even the blind can see with their other senses.  But do I understand, feel what I see?  Not every day.  This book is about what people see or perceive through art, through love, through hate, through bigotry, through blindness and through hunger.  Habit and emotion filter what I see into what I perceive.  Then I assume that this perception is truth.

An artist can see beyond the emotions and experiences (habits) to then invoke a new feeling.  This alchemy lets me see the familiar anew.  An old familiar street becomes a passage to adventure; a common, shy woman becomes beautiful and intelligent.  Vermeer, of whom this books speaks, had this magic, which is why he is known as a master.

I saw Girl with a Pearl Earring, the painting, in Mauritshuis about two years ago along with several other of Vermeer's works.  I was shocked by its size (small) but I was also shocked by the size of the earring.  In real life the painting should be called 'Earring Wearing Girl'.  That magnificent pearl ennobles the girl but it is also a heavy burden.  The look in her eyes and the expression on her face seem fleeting, insecure compared with the solidity of this pearl by her slim neck.

This painting arouses the desire to explore further.  The girl's slightly parted lips, the reflection on the pearl and her clothes tease the viewer with a story... a fantasy.  And so Tracy Chevalier explores and paints her own picture.  Art inspired by art.  Vermeer himself used every day utensils and furniture as well as every day people.  This tradition is continued by Chevalier as the object of her story and the painting becomes a maid in Vermeer's household... a pretty, pragmatic, intelligent maid...


@Tracy_Chevalier
Tracy Chevalier 
ISBN: 9780007232161