Vermeer's Clients

Johan Larson - "a tronie, by Vermeer"

The sculptor Johan Larson at one time owned a so-called "tronie" by Vermeer which was valued at 10 guilders in his death inventory. The now defunct term refers to "heads " or "faces" which had become familiar through Rembrandt and his followers. Even though the tronie represented a bust length single figure, it is not a portrait in the true sense. Rather, it was an opportunity for the artist to demonstrate his ability in rendering some kind of exotic garment, particular lighting conditions or characteristic facial types that struck him in particular. Vermeer's Girl in a Red Hat, Girl with a Pearl Earring and Study of a Young Woman can all be considered tronies.

The relatively low price for which the painting was sold is not surprising - even tronies by very popular Dutch masters such a Rembrandt fetched low prices. Vermeer's own Girl with a Pearl Earring was acquired in 1882 for a paltry 230 guilders when the artist's work began to be avidly collected. John Montias believes that the most likely candidate would be Girl in a Red Hat, due to its miniscule dimensions. He believes that Girl with a Pearl Earring" would have surely been held in high enough esteem by contemporaries to be valued at more than 10 guilders at the time the Larson inventory was taken in August 1664, precisely one year after De Monconys had been told about the sale of a single-figure painting for six hundred guilders."

From a purely speculative point of view, of the three known tronies by Vermeer's hand, it would seem that Girl with a Pearl Earring might appeal most to the tastes of a sculptor. The painting is a masterwork of simple sculptural volume which takes on much of its expressiveness by the simple torsion of the girl's head respects to her shoulders, something a sculptor would have certainly noticed. This quality of three-dimensionality seems unique among Vermeer's tronies; in this painting, however, it appears to be the principle expressive intention.