SUBMITTED BY Timbo

December 9, 2003 — The subject of Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" is well on her way to becoming an icon, thanks to her portrayal by Scarlett Johansson in a movie based on a book inspired by the masterwork.

The painting was among 20 oils in the Vermeer show seen in Washington and The Hague in the mid-1990's. In 1999 it reappeared on the cover of Tracy Chevalier's novel "Girl With a Pearl Earring," which imagined the girl to be Griet, a buxom maid who becomes Vermeer's muse. Now, in Peter Webber's movie adaptation, which opens Dec. 12 in New York and Los Angeles, it is Scarlett Johansson's Griet who is stirring the repressed passion of Colin Firth's Vermeer.

For the purpose of fiction, of course, it helps that not too much is known about Vermeer's life. This Dutch master was born in 1632 and died in 1675; he made about 45 paintings (some 35 survive); he lived in his mother-in-law's house with his wife, Catharina, and eventually 11 children; he worked as an art appraiser; he had a wealthy patron, Pieter van Ruijven; he painted slowly, doing perhaps two oils a year; and his models were probably family members or friends.

On screen "Girl With a Pearl Earring" captures the mood of a mid-17th-century Delft household as reflected in Dutch genre paintings. And it skillfully evokes the light, color, silence and intimacy that characterize Vermeer's works. It even shows Griet walking through Delft's town square in the right direction to reach the canal-side house where Vermeer once lived. It could be said that almost everything about the film is real  except the story. And this story is not about painting, Mr. Webber insisted, eager to distance his first feature film from traditional artist biopics. "It's about creativity and the link between art and money and power and sex in some strange unholy mixture," he explained over coffee in a private club near Notting Hill Gate. "That's what interested me when I read the screenplay." He paused, then added with a loud laugh, "To tell you the truth, I'm more interested in sex than in painting."

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