Girl with the Red Hat, Johannes Vermeer, oil on panel roughly 9 x 7 inches (23 x 18 cm), in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, DC.
Not as iconic as Girl with a Pearl Earring, so perhaps easier to see freshly, Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat is likewise a “tronie”, a painting of an interesting face, often in costume, as opposed to a formal portrait.
This is a very small painting, but striking nonetheless.
It’s common for painters to carry an important color through to other parts of a composition. Here, the dramatic red of the hat, part of which is in shadow, is balanced only by the red of the girl’s lips, also partly in shadow.
In fact, the majority of the face is in shadow, seemingly an odd shoice. The entire image is somewhat dark, except for the highlight on the lower left side of the face, streaks of light on the creases in the robe and the starkly white cravat.
For a painting that is intended to be a captivating face, there are a lot of interesting choices here.
The girl’s right hand is hidden behind the lion’s head finial of the chair, in much the way an artist’s drawing hand is often hidden in a self-portrait. The gaze directly at the viewer is characteristic of self portraits as well, leading me to the sometimes offered suggestion that some of Vermeer’s paintings may have been painted by one of his daughters. But forensic examination reveals the painting started with the head of a man in a wide brimmed hat, obviating that bit of fanciful speculation.
Shining out of the darkness of her hair, there is a highlight on the earring in her right ear, perhaps of pearl of silver, and I think the topmost white highlight at the upper right section of the cravat is the balancing earring.
There is an interesting light area to the left of her mouth (our left) that seems a bit odd to my eye, given the shadowed tones around it. Both that and the highlight on her left cheek are quite low in chroma.
Below that, the separation of the chin and cravat is quite dark and rough edged, looking almost like a charcoal line.
In many areas we see the soft edged brush marks that are often characteristic of Vermeer, and are perhaps due to the use of “Venice Turpentine”, which is not a solvent but technically a balsam, a resin that has not been distilled to produce a solvent like the more familiar gum spirits of turpentine.
The eyes, usually the focus of a portrait or other painted face, are in deep shadow, except… the small, perfectly circular highlight in her right eye is bright turquoise blue.