Tronies

There is probably no face more universally recognizable, with the exception perhaps of Mona Lisa's, than that of the "Girl with a Pearl Earring," by Vermeer.  On our recent trip to San Francisco, that anonymous face with the blue and gold turban seemed to peep out at us on every street corner -- one gets a fleeting glimpse of her on passing buses and trolley cars, on banners and posters at every tourist destination. The painting is currently being exhibited at the De Young Museum.  It has drawn an unprecedented number of visitors to the museum and its likeness has been slapped onto every conceivable type of merchandise the marketing department of the museum could think of. 

One of the interesting things we learned at the exhibition is the distinction between tronies and portraits. Tronies, an old Dutch word for "faces", in art world parlance refers to Dutch paintings from the 17th Century, usually in the portrait format of heads or busts, which are studies of facial expressions (character studies) of unidentified sitters -- to use a condensed version of the definition culled from Wikipedia and other sources.
     
What exactly is so fascinating about this painting, or more specifically, about the young woman's face?  Unlike the forward-facing Mona Lisa, with her placid expression and half smile, Vermeer's model seems to be casting a backward glance at us questioningly through the veil of time.  The 1999 novel of the same title and the 2003 film based on it starring Scarlett Johansson seems to me to rob her of the many other possible readings of the face that a viewer can conjure up when standing face to face with it.

But what interests me most about the painting, is not figuring out what the facial expression--her imploring gaze and parted lips, as some might describe them--of the girl is trying to say, but the painter's ability to make palpable the sense of an arrested motion, perhaps of the girl's slow pacing movement being halted by a summons from behind, conveyed by the just-so turn of the shoulder and the tilt of the head.  

At any rate this is a painting which any budding artist would want to copy, even I.  Below is a picture of my girl with a pearl earring in the intermediate stage of its becoming, next to the original.  I chose to show this here because it seems still to possess the potential of becoming a good copy, while my finished product was completely hard and sterile, incapable of producing any mystery or poetry.        

A face that speaks
a thousand words

My attempt at copy