A brand new exhibition on the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, reveals how Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, has modified over time. Using the newest imaging expertise, together with a new 108-billion-pixel scan by 3D digital microscopy firm Hirox, researchers had been capable of higher perceive what this work could have seemed like when Vermeer first painted it round 1665.
“We found out some really exciting things about the girl,” says portray conservator Abbie Vandivere on 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 additionally revealed that Vermeer made compositional modifications throughout the portray course of, such because the place of the ear. They additionally allowed researchers to hint the place his pigments originated. Lead white got here from the Peak District in England, cochineal (pink) from bugs present in Mexico and South America and ultramarine from Afghanistan.
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