Girl with a Pearl earring and other Treasures from the Mauritshuis
produced by Exhibition on Screen
in cinemas from 13 January
http://www.exhibitiononscreen.com/girl-with-a-pearl-earring
from Exhibition on Screen’ website:
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer is one of the most enduring paintings in the history of art. Even today, its recent world tour garnered huge queues lining up for the briefest glimpse of its majestic beauty – In Japan 1.2 million people saw the exhibition. Yet the painting itself is surrounded in mystery. This beautifully filmed new documentary seeks to investigate the many unanswered questions associated with this extraordinary piece. Who was this girl? Why and how was it painted? Why is it so revered?
After its world tour, the Girl with a Pearl Earring returned to the much-loved Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, which has just completed extensive renovations. Enjoying unparalleled exclusive access to this historical exhibition, the film takes the audience on a journey as it seeks to answer many of the questions surrounding this enigmatic painting and its mysterious creator, Vermeer. Using the recently completed and highly complex makeover of the museum as its starting point, the film goes on a behind the scenes detective journey to seek out the answers that lie within the other masterpieces housed in the collection.
One of the pleasures of being a painter is being able (more or less) to copy paintings you love or are interested in. Since last year I had seven Vermeers (by my count five and a half) at a 35-minute walk from my home here in Rome (and free entrance), I took some time off and made three copies: the NG Lady Standing Lady at the Virginals, the NGA The Girl with a Red Hat and the newly attributed Young Woman at the Virginal (New York private collection).
The London experience was dreadful. Although I cheated and projected the drawing onto my canvas, had a state-of-the-art digital image of the painting on my studio monitor and could check my progress by viewing at the original any time I wished, everything went wrong, especially the make-or-break tonal values. The contours look weary, the modeling completely exhausted and even the local colors, which at least in theory should be approachable, were off key to put it nicely. The grand compensation for my labor is that my wooden lady will look out at me every day and tell me that I am not Vermeer, unless of course I turn her to the wall, which I did.
The Girl with a Red Hat went better—in the beginning. I got the hat glazed properly and was foolish enough to take a deep breath and whack in the background all at once, spontaneously, as it should be done. Not bad. Obviously, I postponed doing the face for as long as I could knowing it is one of the most finessed faces in Vermeer’s oeuvre (I prefer her to the Girl with a Pearl Earring). But when I finally threw caution to the wind and made an attempt to capture the play of silvery greens and pinks that make the young lady glow, I got something akin to a face of dark and light mud.
Last try, the New York picture: a work I do not admire. But since I am writing a lengthy analysis on it, I decided it would be a good idea to walk in Vermeer’s shoes (or whoever made it) to see what it might feel like. What surprised me is that I didn’t get any surprises. That is, it wasn’t hard to copy. Nothing went differently than I had expected. Nothing really went really wrong. The background is a bit too light (maybe it’s better), the cheeks are not pink enough and I couldnt bring myself to make the shadows of the face as dark as the original, but from a technical point of view the painting presnt nothing that was substantially not within the reach of my modest talents.
Now that I have three Vermeers for myself, I’ll keep two turned to the wall for the moment and one framed, but hung somewhere in my house where I won’t see it too much.
