Novità!
Discover with us the Vermeer puzzle featuring the wonderful masterpiece Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of the most famous paintings by the great Dutch master, preserved in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Also known as the “Dutch Mona Lisa”.
Jan Vermeer is undoubtedly the most renowned and beloved exponent of 17th-century Dutch painting. Much of his life remains shrouded in mystery, as do his works, which has only increased his success and fame.
In fact, only forty paintings are known, a small number for such a famous artist, and very few documents offer us an image of this painter with his unique, delicate style, attentive to European artistic trends.
His birth date is uncertain; we know he was baptized on October 31, 1632, in Delft, a city where he remained all his life. It is therefore believed that he was born the previous day, October 30, into a middle-class family. His father was a silk weaver and art dealer.
Nothing is known about Vermeer as a child or teenager. His artistic training is also uncertain. It is unknown whether he ever left Delft to study painting elsewhere.
In April 1653, Vermeer married Catharina Bolnes, from a wealthy Catholic family in Gouda, at the church of Schipluy.
Johannes was just over twenty years old, Catharina a year older. A few days before getting married, Vermeer probably converted to Catholicism.
During their twenty-three-year marriage, they had fifteen children, four of whom died before their father.
Vermeer painted his hometown and bourgeois interiors. In his rooms, he does not depict reality as it appears, but composes it, as a modern film director would, meticulously determining the light, framing, costume, pose, and objects.
He stood out from his colleagues for his innate ability to make the tranquil, reassuring beauty of a simple gesture, a glance, or the suspension of a thought, appear anew.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (also known as “Girl with a Turban”) is Jan Vermeer’s undisputed masterpiece, a work that has inspired books and intrigued every observer.
The Vermeer puzzle, without a background, depicts a young woman, with her torso in profile but her face turned toward the viewer, as if she had turned to respond to a call. The painting became so famous and popular that it was nicknamed the “Dutch Mona Lisa.”
The model’s gaze is languid and enchanting, and even her moist, slightly parted lips imbue her figure with an innocent sensuality.
The girl, clearly standing in front of a window, wears a curious colorful headpiece, made of a yellow cloth wrapped like a turban and held in place by a blue fabric band around her forehead, and wears a precious earring with a large teardrop-shaped pearl that reflects the sunlight.
The jewel is painted using only two brushstrokes, separated from each other: it is our eye that creates the illusion of seeing the entire pearl.
Neither the name of the mysterious girl nor the circumstances of the commission or creation of the painting are known, elements which have obviously increased its allure.
Overwhelmed by debts Jan Vermeer died on December 15, 1675, at the age of 43. The following year, his wife, declaring bankruptcy, stated in a document:
due to the great expenses related to the children, for which he no longer had personal means, he became distressed and weakened to the point that he lost his health and died within a day and a half.
