Color and Light: Analyzing the Relationships Between Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Calling of Saint Matthew

This paper aims to investigate two paintings, The Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Calling of Saint Matthew, as with similar style. Meanwhile, explores the differences when compare these two paintings. The literary review will provide background information for both paintings as well as more specific description regarding the detail aspects inside the painting. Later on in the comparison section, the main angles the analysis focused on are color and light. The finding of this paper indicate that the technique is quite similar used when painting yet for different purposes. Vermeer put light to focus and emphasize the main character by leaving the background dark, while Caravaggio conveyed strong emotion and story through the use of light. These results suggest that there are a lot of hidden similarity in between two completely different paintings as well as a lot of differences that could potentially be found in similar styled paintings.