Pearls
Pearls recur throughout Vermeer's work as the ideal subject for his study of light — a single soft highlight standing in for a whole luminous object. From the teardrop earring of his most famous tronie to the necklace fastened before a mirror and the pearls weighed on a balance, they let him reduce a form to a point of reflected light.
Light reduced to a point
A pearl was, for Vermeer, almost the perfect subject. A single soft highlight can stand in for the whole object, so a pearl let him reduce a form to a point of reflected light and let the eye do the rest. The earring in his most famous tronie may not even be a real pearl: it is arguably too large, and its surface reads more like polished glass or tin, a painted illusion as much as a jewel.
Worn, fastened, weighed
Elsewhere pearls hang at the throat and gather between the fingers. In Woman with a Pearl Necklace a woman lifts the ribbons of her necklace toward a mirror, caught in a moment of quiet vanity by the window light. The Study of a Young Woman wears a single drop earring like the famous girl, set against a dark ground.
The most charged of them is Woman Holding a Balance, where strings of pearls and gold lie on the table before her while she steadies an empty balance, a Last Judgement hanging on the wall behind. Here the pearls carry the older meaning of worldly riches and the brevity of life, even as Vermeer treats them, once again, as pure gatherings of light.
