From the red cloth Jan van Eyck wound around his head in 1433 to the bowler René Magritte painted in 1964, painters rarely leave a hat to chance. It sits beside the face, where the eye lands first, and it can announce a rank, a trade or a disguise.
An officer's beaver felt painted by Vermeer leads back to the fur trade of North America, and a famous Rubens portrait takes its nickname from straw found nowhere in the picture.
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How These Were Chosen
Of everything a person wears, a hat is the only piece that touches the face. For a painter, that makes it a tool for light: a brim can throw shade across the eyes or let the sun through, and a dark crown sets off a pale face.
Headwear is also a sign that viewers read before anything else. A doge's horned cap names his office in Venice, a quack surgeon's funnel gives away his fraud, and a flat straw boater marks a rower on the Seine.
Five painters went further and chose a hat for their own self-portraits: Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Vigée Le Brun, Van Gogh and Magritte. Each of them decided how he or she would be seen, starting with what to wear on top.
12. Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665)
In Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted by Johannes Vermeer in Delft around 1665, a young woman looks back over her shoulder, lips parted. Around her head is wound a turban of blue and yellow cloth.
The large pearl at her ear gave the picture its name, but the turban says what kind of picture this is. No girl in a Dutch town of the 1660s dressed this way, so the cloth is a costume, and the picture is classed as a tronie, the Dutch term for a study of a type or a character rather than a portrait of a known sitter.
The blue of that turban came from far away. Vermeer painted it with ultramarine, a pigment made from lapis lazuli, a stone brought from what is now Afghanistan and in the seventeenth century more precious than gold. A recent technical study of the canvas suggests the stone was heated before use, which gives a deeper blue.
The same study found that Vermeer reshaped the turban as he worked, moving its top along with the ear and the back of the neck. The result is a blue band that hugs her skull and a yellow tail of cloth falling behind her shoulder, which frame the face in strong color.
The pearl, by contrast, is barely painted. It is little more than two brushstrokes, a bright highlight at upper left and a reflection of her collar below, and no hook or wire holds it to the ear.
At a Glance
Artist: Johannes Vermeer (1632 to 1675)
Painted: About 1665
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 44.5 × 39 cm (17.5 × 15.4 in)
Where to see it: Mauritshuis, The Hague
11. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait (1659)
In his Self-Portrait of 1659, Rembrandt faces the viewer under a dark beret, an old man with his hands clasped in front of him. He painted it in Amsterdam at a hard moment in his life. The beret looks like a plain black cap. It did not start out that way.