The following information is NOT printed on this Altered Art postcard:
The original painting which this Altered Art is based on is called Girl With a Pearl Earring, 1665 by Johannes Vermeer. The painting has been called the "Mona Lisa of the North". The original 1664 oil painting hangs in the (Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis) in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.
Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colors, sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.
Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death, and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century Vermeer was rediscovered, although only thirty-five paintings are firmly attributed to him today. Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
