NARRATOR: This painting is by Johannes Vermeer.

WALTER LIEDTKE: Just imagine this in a seventeenth-century interior with low light from the window—or even light from a candle—and how three dimensional this might look. The frame of the picture might even suggest a window and the figure’s behind it.

It is a young woman who must be a real person. The model is so very individualized, perhaps more so than the famous painting by Vermeer, which is quite similar to this one from about the same time, the Girl with the Pearl Earring. But it's very important to know that these pictures were not intended as portraits. And these works were collected as intriguing-looking characters, whether they're beautiful, ugly, old, young. So this is a fancy picture meant to appeal to a collector.

NARRATOR: The woman’s costume would have suggested exotic—perhaps even Middle-Eastern dress— to contemporary Dutch viewers. And her face, so luminous against the dark, velvety background, has an unusual kind of beauty.

WALTER LIEDTKE: This face is so odd anatomically that the expression almost saves it for you. She’s looking to the side, but the smile clearly responds to us. And I think that was one of the points of this kind of picture—to be not only physically interesting, but you're haunted by what kind of person this could be.