Bold innocence of portrait just a fantasy

Vermeer's original Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer was one of the masters of the Dutch "Golden Age". But only 34 paintings have been accepted by scholars as authentic. This one has been called the "Dutch Mona Lisa".

The similarities are immediate: the penetrating focus on a female subject whose gaze is both tantalising and mysterious.

But Vermeer's oil-on-canvas picture is not a portrait. A portrait of a woman was traditionally ordered by her husband on marriage or betrothal - a public statement of marital status, social standing and personal virtue.

Portraits were often placed in the front rooms of houses for visitors and even passersby to see.

Vermeer's girl, who wears an exotic turban, is in fact an example of another common type of Dutch Golden Age painting - a "tronie".

Tronie means "head" and is a small image of a generic type, typically involving dressing up and posing. Tronies are theatrical, role-playing images that "play" with the viewer.

Dutch inventories from Vermeer's day list tronies of old or young people, foreigners, or describe the figures in terms of their emotional state, like "a laughing tronie". The woman here is posing provocatively, her head turned dramatically towards the viewer, her lips parted suggestively yet innocently, her liquid eyes meeting ours with startling immediacy.

The immediacy of her expression is matched by Vermeer's broad, expressive brushwork. The folds of the turban are handled with rich freshness to indicate soft folds of cloth that move with the sitter, and the slight ripples in her dress insist that the girl here has just moved to meet our gaze.

Set against a dark background, she comes to life on the canvas. It's no wonder Vermeer's girl has become the subject of popular fascination: she is bold and bewitching, provocative and mysterious while still maintaining an air of youthful innocence.

There is no symbolism to decode here. The tronie subject would have been obvious to Vermeer's contemporaries, who would have remarked upon her fanciful dress and her life-like face. Her pearl earring, probably exaggerated in size to call attention to pearls as costly luxuries, points again to the picture as a fantasy, a play.

Dutch Mona Lisa

Painting: Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665-1666?
Artist: Johannes Vermeer, (1632-1675).
Seen lately: The book and the 2003 film, starring Scarlett Johansson.
See the original: At Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands.

* Erin Griffey is a specialist in Baroque art at the University of Auckland.