Abstract: In Girl With the Pearl Earring (2003), the picture by Vermeer known by the same title is the place of a confrontation between two opposite qualities of gaze. To Vermeer’s wife, this picture is a portrait. The one of Griet, a young maid of Vermeer’s household, and it bears the trace of the desire of the painter for his model. To Vermeer and Griet herself, the painting is a figure : it is there as a substitute to something radically different ; it acts as a support for a painting problem.
