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Here in one of Vermeer's most engaging images, a young girl dressed in an exotic turban gazes at the viewer. Her liquid eyes and half-opened mouth impart the immediacy of her presence, yet her purity and her evocative costume giver her a lasting quality, unconstrained by time or place.
Despite the feeling of immediacy Vermeer thus creates, the young girl's idealized image conveys a sense of timeless beauty. Vermeer worked as a classicist, purifying his images to express lasting rather than transient qualities of life.
Excerpt taken from
Vermeer: The Complete Works
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr |
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