Girl with the Red Hat

Girl with the Red Hat is one of the smallest and most captivating of Johannes Vermeer’s works, a tronie — a character study rather than a commissioned portrait — in which a young woman in a plumed scarlet hat and blue costume turns toward the light with a look of amused curiosity. Painted about 1669, it is among the very few works by the master of Delft to be painted on panel, and its jewel-like surface, built up in fine, rounded touches, shows Vermeer’s fascination with the camera obscura in the soft halation of the highlights and the bright fringe of the feathers. The red hat, the deep blue gown and the unfathomable expression make it one of the most reproduced images in all of Dutch painting, at once a likeness and an enigma. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.