The girl with the nose ring

I'm not sure there are many people who haven't read The girl with the pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier. It's the story of Griet, a servant in the home of the painter Johannes Vermeer. She has an aesthetic sensibility, which is noticed by the 17th century Dutch painter. Griet is increasingly drawn into his artistic process. The book was inspired by a Vermeer painting of the same name.

At work, we are exploring Flickr, the photo sharing site, so I searched for the painting. Images of the painting, yes, but also all manner of strange homages. There are modern photographs of ladies posing, chalk artists drawing on the sidewalk, copy paintings both good and bad, and dolls and stuffies posed with wrapped hair. My favourite is the Lego mini figure version! What an excellent resource for a visual artist, both for finding images to draw and self promotion.

I headed over to Youtube, reluctantly, as I think the quality has declined since everyone's started to upload. I found the trailers for the Girl with the pearl earring movie with Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. There were some self promoting artists and musicians' videos "inspired" by the painting, which were painful to watch. However, I found some interesting author interviews with Tracy Chevalier. She was talking about the research process for her latest novel, Remarkable creatures. Unfortunately the reviewers did not find that book very remarkable. Remembering how much we enjoyed Girl with the pearl earring, I read reviews of Chevalier's other novels. The lady and the unicorn was highly recommended for book clubs. It draws inspiration from the unicorn tapestries in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

When you look at the original Vermeer painting, your eye is drawn to the luminous pearl. It is the focal point of the image. I called this post The girl with the nose ring, because my husband is painting a portrait of a lady with a big shiny nose hoop! He took this before photo as he is very reluctant to paint in the jewelry!

Happy reading!