Girl With a Pearl Earring is probably the most well-known of Vermeer’s pieces. At the size the painting portrays it, it would have been extremely valuable, Roelofs writes. Vermeer lived in the Netherlands, and pearls like this one would have had to be shipped there all the way from South Asia, according to Hyperallergic’s Taylor Michael. Pearl earrings and necklaces were all the rage in the second half of the 17th century in Europe, but they were decidedly luxurious items. He writes, “In Vermeer’s work we are looking at imitation glass pearls, which in his time were mainly sold by Venetian glass blowers.” Roelofs, who is co-curator of the display, writes in the exhibition catalog that a pearl of this size would have been “astronomically expensive,” far beyond the financial reach of the Dutch painter, per the Art Newspaper’s Martin Bailey. Others have raised this possibility before, but the claim is resurfacing thanks to a new blockbuster Vermeer exhibition-the largest ever staged-at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. But according to Dutch art historian Pieter Roelofs, the earring was likely an imitation glass bauble, rather than a real pearl. No, it hasn’t been misattributed, and no, it’s not a fake. Something isn’t right about Johannes Vermeer’s iconic Girl With a Pearl Earring.
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