Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 1999 historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier. It takes place in Delft, Holland and was inspired by Johannes Vermeer's painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. It fictionalizes the circumstances under which the painting was created. It was adapted into a 2003 film of the same name and a 2008 play of the same name.
Author Tracy Chevalier came up with the idea for the novel in November 1997 while she was looking at a po...
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Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 1999 historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier. It takes place in Delft, Holland and was inspired by Johannes Vermeer's painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. It fictionalizes the circumstances under which the painting was created. It was adapted into a 2003 film of the same name and a 2008 play of the same name.
Author Tracy Chevalier came up with the idea for the novel in November 1997 while she was looking at a poster of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. She bought the poster when she was nineteen years old, and it hung wherever she lived over the next sixteen years. Chevalier notes that the "ambiguous look" on the girl's face left the "most lasting impression" on her. She describes the girl's expression "to be a mass of contradictions: innocent yet experienced, joyous yet tearful, full of longing and yet full of loss." She began to think that the girl had directed all these emotions at the painter, and began to think of the "story behind...
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