One of the world’s best known paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer, is getting a thorough high-tech examination starting this week at the Mauritshuis museum in Den Haag, the Netherlands—and the public is invited to watch.
The painting has been moved to a glass-walled laboratory for a full study using infrared cameras, x-ray powder diffraction scanners, digital microscopy and optical coherence tomography in an attempt to learn more about the 17th-century masterpiece. The study continues through March 12.
‘We are hoping to find the answer to a whole host of questions,’ Abbie Vandivere (above), leader of the team and picture restorer at the Mauritshuis, told Dutch media. ‘What are the initial layers of the painting like? From which parts of the world did Vermeer’s pigments come? How did he manage to apply transparent blue layers over the light blue base layers of her headscarf?”
Joris Dik, an archaeological materials expert added: “We won’t be touching the painting itself but we will be giving it a full bodyscan, going over texture, gloss, colour and transparency milimetre by millimetre.”
