“Who’s That Girl?”: A Digital Visualization of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring at The Hague’s Museum

The 4-metre-high plastic colossus will be placed in the foyer of the museum in June. Visitors can just touch it with their fingers.

Digital visualization

The printed girl will be part of a presentation about the painting by Vermeer, which is currently in the spotlight again due to the sold-out exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Girl with a Pearl Earring also hung there for a while, but is now back home in The Hague.

The presentation shows results of research into Vermeer’s world-famous masterpiece. “In a digital visualization, the visitor not only discovers what the Girl looked like in 1665, but also what changes the work has undergone in the more than 350 years since, including the appearance of craquelure (small cracks in the paint or canvas). the presentation provides more insight into Vermeer’s painting technique. The visitor learns everything about the artist’s pigments and materials,” the museum reports.

Two paint strokes

There will also be a display case with the ten pigments he used and a world map showing where these substances came from, such as cochineal made from insects that can be found on Mexican and South American cacti and ultramarine that was made from precious stone from Afghanistan .

Special parts of the painting are also enlarged in plastic separately from the 3D print, so that details can be seen and can also be touched.

“The pearl earring, for example, was made with only two paint strokes. As a visitor, you can see the transparent blue layers in her headscarf, the glitter in her eye and the moisture on her lips. Visitors can also touch these details and feel the relief of the paint surface.”

Who’s that Girl? can be visited from 8 June to 7 January.