Historical fiction set in 17th Century DELFT

10th September 2024

Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, historical fiction set in 17th Century Delft.

#fromourbookshelves

This is a re-read from our bookshelves and I was drawn to pick it up again because I have been reading the author’s latest novel The Glassmaker set in 15th Century Venice onwards. The delight of her novels is that she clearly meticulously researched the periods in which she sets her novels and in Girl With A Pearl Earring she brings the era and everyday scenes to wonderful and colourful life. Imagine the description of a child blowing bubbles through a scallop shell fixed to the end of a hollow stick.. just a passing image of life being played out on the streets of Delft.

I have a fondness for this novel because it was one of the books that inspired us to set up the TripFiction website because for me it absolutely transported me back in time and there is a real sense of the echoes of footsteps past. I am sure many of the scenes described would trickle into my consciousness if I were to find myself in Delft – and one of these days I will choose to visit because of this novel. And that is what literary tourism is all about.

Griet’s father has lost his job and thus the family needs any income they can find. She is assigned to work as a maid for someone in the Papists’ Corner – Catholics were a minority in the city – and that someone turns out to be the household of the great, renowned artist Johannes Vermeer.

The drudge of everyday life for a servant is chronicled, as Griet moves around the house and the locality, keeping a wary eye on certain family members, homesick for her family. And then the plague descends in her family’s area….

Vermeer, meanwhile, sees that she has a gift for composition and colour, and gradually she is encouraged to mix and grind his paints – but of course not the ultramarine, the most expensive lapis lazuli in an artist’s collection of pigments.

Her company in his studio seems to have eased him out of his fallow period, at a point in his life when he was unable  to produce any art. And then, of course, he is inspired to set her at the heart of one of his new creations…

This is an involving story of a maid’s stoicism, set against punitive social conventions within a patriarchal society, that proves so transportive of time and place. A real pleasure to read.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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