On her website, Tracy Chevalier describes the inspiration for Girl With A Pearl Earring:
I was lying in bed one morning, idly contemplating a poster that hung across from me of the Vermeer painting Girl With a Pearl Earring. I’d had the poster since I was 19 and first discovered the painting. As I pondered the girl’s face, I thought suddenly, ‘I wonder what Vermeer did to her to make her look like that.’ It was the first time I’d ever thought of the painting as being a portrait of a relationship rather than simply of a girl. After all, she is looking at him, not at us. That drama and conflict in her face is reflecting how she feels about him. I immediately looked up what we know about her, and was delighted to discovered no one knows who she (or indeed any of his models) is. That meant I was free to make up whatever I wanted.
It seemed to me that the girl’s look is intimate; she knows Vermeer well. Some think it’s his eldest daughter, but she would have been just 12 at the time, and this girl seems older. Also, her mouth is open and glistening — a sensual expression that I don’t think a father would have given his daughter. But someone physically close; a servant, perhaps? If it’s a servant, that pearl earring couldn’t be hers. We know that Vermeer had different models wear his wife Catharina’s clothes, so maybe the earring is hers. How would Catharina feel about her husband painting this beautiful girl wearing her earring? Within three days I had the whole story worked out.