New scans of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring reveal masterpiece's hidden secrets

A new exhibition at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, shows how Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, has changed over time. Using the latest imaging technology, including a new 108-billion-pixel scan by 3D digital microscopy company Hirox, researchers were able to better understand what this work may have looked like when Vermeer first painted it around 1665.

"We found out some really exciting things about the girl,” says painting conservator Abbie Vandivere at the Mauritshuis. “For instance, that the background used to be a green curtain, and that she has eyelashes that are now no longer visible because the paints have changed over time.”

The scans also revealed that Vermeer made compositional changes during the painting process, such as the position of the ear. They also allowed researchers to trace where his pigments originated. Lead white came from the Peak District in England, cochineal (red) from insects found in Mexico and South America and ultramarine from Afghanistan.

–


Get more from New Scientist:

About New Scientist:
New Scientist was founded in 1956 for “all those interested in scientific discovery and its social consequences”. Today our website, videos, newsletters, app, podcast and print magazine cover the world’s most important, exciting and entertaining science news as well as asking the big-picture questions about life, the universe, and what it means to be human.

New Scientist

[jeanoltt]

The most beautiful painting of all time!

[pbhello]

does anyone know if there is a computerized rendition of the painting as it would have looked originally? I would love to see that image

[jeff__w]

The HIROX Girl with a Pearl Earring 108-gigapixel image (linked to in the video description) is fun to play around with. (It would be better if information about the ultra-high resolution images were integrated with the images themselves so we have a better idea of what we’re seeing.)

The site for the Mauritshuis has one of those image comparison sliders so you can see the painting as it appeared in 1665 and as it appears today: click the *Mh* on the upper right of the HIROX site and navigate to “Two years of research” (which appears to be a mistake). In general, it’s a professional-looking but really kludgy site—as just one example: the text on the page with the image slider seems to refer to an entirely different page; the _correct_ text with the title “What dit she look like?” _[sic]_ appears on a _different_ page with the link “Timelapse.”

[kirstymackenzie]

So glad I bought New Scientist today as I wouldn’t have known about how the details of The Girl with a Pearl Earring were found

[eternaldoorman]

Wow. Now there's more in the digital reproduction of the image than you could get if you went to the museum and saw it with your own eyes. That's progress.

[eyeshowyou]

Vermeer was a faker....he could not draw, needed to use a camera obscura and other tools to create this "masterpiece". If you use the paint correctly it does not crack. Even that he did not do correctly .It should not be in a museum.Real Art is done FREEHAND. Real Eyes Realize Real Lies