Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

Vermeer’s economic dependence on his patronage by indicating that he has taken
on a new protégé and by emphasizing his own wealth (“Is there another patron in
Delft with pockets as deep as mine?”). He further compounds his superiority by
asking Vermeer depreciatively if he has already decided “what to daub next.”
In short, by focusing its function as link or barrier between social classes
and genders, the film presents an ekphrasis of art enmeshed in the public sphere.
Significantly, by focusing on private, intimate moments of ekphrasis, the novel
minimizes the social implications of Vermeer's paintings. In fact, Chevalier’s
novel is built around a double ekphrasis: first, the whole book gives voice to the
silent image/woman in the picture Girl with a Pearl Earring, and second, a
combination of several descriptions of and reflections on other paintings within
the story occur, all from that girl’s perspective. In this novel, then, the historically
male-dominated field of ekphrasis becomes a space of female thoughts, and of her
private retreat from social dictates.
In the film, ekphrasis and paintings play a different role. Here, the
depiction of paintings does not mark a relationship between an individual and a
work of art, as the ekphrastic discourse of the novel does, but rather an integration
of art works into a social setting. Thus, the images are seen and commented on by
people other than Griet, particularly by Vermeer’s libidinous patron van Ruijven
(Woman with a Pearl Necklace and Griet’s “portrait”), whose evident goal is to
possess both the women and their images. At the same time, paintings also serve
to bridge the gap between social classes, which the film further emphasizes
through frequent shots of Vermeer’s refined painters’ hands and Griet’s work-
209