Painters used everyday objects to say what words could not: rank, secrecy, faith, the passing of time. This guide covers twelve of them, keys, gloves, jewellery, hats, shoes, mirrors, books, letters, windows, maps and globes, money and candlelight, with the paintings where each one speaks and a full list of twelve for every object.
For the people who first saw these paintings, such things were part of daily life, and a glove or a hat told them something about its owner before they had read a face. For us the message has mostly gone quiet, and reading it back is harder than it looks.
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The best known object on this list comes with a problem. The pearl in Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted around 1665, is probably not a pearl. The Mauritshuis, which owns the picture, calls it "probably an imitation pearl" and says it may be a drop of glass, varnished to give it a matte sheen.
The museum goes one step further and allows that the pearl could be an invention of Vermeer's imagination. So the jewel that generations of viewers have taken for a pearl may never have existed outside the painting.
That sets the question for every object below. When did a viewer read a message, and when was the thing simply there? Some answers are firm, and a slipper, a pair of gloves and a horned cap are among them. One is close to the opposite of what its reputation suggests, and it hangs on a wall.
What You'll Discover
What the slipper gave away.
Which sitter holds the gloves.
What a horned cap announced.
What hid behind the girl.
What the map was doing there.