This is a historical fiction novel that creates a story as background to the painting done by Johannes Vermeer, a Dutch painter in the 17th century. Tracy Chevalier creates a story and background for one of his most popular paintings, Girl With A Pearl Earring.
In Tracy Chevalier’s story, Griet is a young girl of sixteen, whose father was a tile painter who lost his profession when a kiln exploded and he lost his vision. He finds a job for Griet as a maid at Vermeer’s home as he knows that Griet is interested in color and art, and she has a special skill of being able to clean and put things back in the same place that she found them, as she has been living with her blind father. Griet moves into this different household and into a large Catholic family where she tries to do her job and establish her place with the different people in the home.
Soon, Griet is not just cleaning Vermeer’s studio, but helping to mix paints, occasionally offering advise on the composition of a scene that he is painting, and eventually posing for a portrait after she catches the eye of Vermeer’s patron. Griet is in a tough position where she knows her place in the household and is courting a young man who is a butcher and could provide for her family… yet she is in love with the art of Vermeer and therefor involved more than she should be with him.
The way that Tracy Chevalier describes the star in the center of Delft that points to the different directions and acts as a symbol for Griet’s choices about her life’s direction add tremendously to the feel of the novel. You can tell that she did research in order to write so accurately about this place. Even more than that the description of the mix of feelings Griet experiences as she poses for Vermeer truly make the book. Reading this made me more interested in what is actually known about the artist Vermeer, his life and this painting.
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