Jaime Henry-White/Associated Press Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring.â€Dear Diary:
Perhaps it caught my eye because I was still entranced by the mastery of light I had just seen in so many of the paintings from the Hague’s Mauritshuis Museum, at the Frick.
So, while walking east on 70th Street, I noticed a woman approaching, out of the evening’s darkness into the dim glow of a street lamp. She had an angelic face and blond locks, loosely framed by the hood of her jacket, and was glancing down at a cellphone, parallel to her chest.
The illumination from the phone evenly lit her face, and only her face, as if by candlelight, and as we passed, I felt certain I was seeing an image, contemporary yet timeless, worthy of being immortalized by Vermeer.
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