Study of a Young Woman

Johannes Vermeer completed this young woman around 1665-1667, capturing her in soft light against a dark background. She wears exotic clothing and costume jewelry, a pearl earring catching the glow as she turns toward the viewer. Her expression is gentle but reserved, her features unpretentious. The painting belongs to a genre called tronie, a Dutch term for studies of faces and expressions rather than commissioned portraits.

This work shares obvious similarities with Vermeer's more famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. Both feature women with pearl earrings, scarves draped over their shoulders, and that same deep black backdrop unusual for Vermeer. They're nearly identical in size. But where the Mauritshuis painting has become an icon, Study of a Young Woman remains less known. The sitter here has a broader face, widely spaced eyes, and what critics have called a homelier appearance, leading some to speculate she might have been Vermeer's own daughter rather than a professional model.

The painting sold for just 3 Dutch guilders at a Rotterdam auction in 1816. That's roughly 30 grams of silver. It passed through Belgian aristocracy before Charles and Jayne Wrightsman purchased it privately in the 1950s. They donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979, where it now hangs as one of only a handful of Vermeers in American collections.