Girl with a Pearl Earring Coloring Page

Johannes Vermeer painted this girl in the Dutch city of Delft around 1665, and nobody knows who she was. She isn't meant as a portrait of a particular person. Dutch painters called a picture like this a "tronie," a study of an interesting face or costume.

Her blue head wrap was painted with ultramarine, a colour made by grinding up a stone called lapis lazuli. It cost more than gold at the time. Fewer than 40 paintings by Vermeer survive, and this one hangs in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. People sometimes call her the Mona Lisa of the North.