THE HAGUE – Researchers using a battery of modern imaging techniques have gotten under the skin of Johannes Vermeer's “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” but tests haven't answered the key question about the world famous painting's enigmatic subject. “Who was the girl?” Martine Gosselink, Director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague said in an online presentation Tuesday of new research findings. “Spoiler alert: No, sadly we didn't find out who this young lady was and if she ever really existed.
But we did get a little closer to her.” What the 2018 research project did uncover were details including how the Golden Age Dutch master painted the girl and where he got his pigments.