Ritratto di una giovane donna

Vermeer painted this in Delft in the mid-1660s, the same few years he made the Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the two pictures are nearly the same size. This is not a commissioned likeness of anyone in particular. It is what the Dutch called a tronie, a study of a face and a mood rather than a portrait, and the exotic costume and the pearl were props Vermeer kept in his studio. The light comes in soft from the left and settles on her cheek and the whites of her eyes, which are turned to catch you. Vermeer worked slowly, finishing only a couple of paintings most years, and left barely 35 canvases in his whole life. This is one of the small handful of them that shows a single face looking straight out at the viewer.