Girl With a Pearl Earring: A Novel [ペーパーバック]

   この世に残したのはわずか35作品だが、オランダ人画家ヨハネス・フェルメールは17世紀芸術を代表する、いまだに謎の多い人物の1人だ。わずかに残る法的書類からでは、その人生を十分にうかがい知ることはできない。しかし、光と質感を巧みに操り日常生活を描いた数々の名作で、フェルメールはオランダ芸術の黄金時代を象徴する画家となった。特に、無名の少女を描いた肖像画「真珠の首飾りの少女」は、何世紀にもわたり、見る者を魅了し続けてきた。そしてこの人を引きつけてやまない名画が、トレイシー・シュヴァリエの2作目となる同名小説のモチーフとなっている。

 『Girl With a Pearl Earring』（邦題『真珠の耳飾りの少女』）の舞台は1660年代。オランダ西部の都市デルフトに暮らす裕福なフェルメール一家の様子が中心に描かれていく。この一家の召し使いとして、グリートという控えめだが頭のいい本書のヒロインが雇われたことで、さまざまな波紋がフェルメール家に生じていく。このわずか16歳のヒロインが主人フェルメールと急速に親しくなっていったのがはじまりだった。やがてフェルメールは彼女を助手として取り立て、ついにはモデルに起用することとなる。嫉妬深い画家、絶えず妊娠しているその妻やむっつりした義母などを軸に、一家に漂うなんとも複雑な緊張感をシュヴァリエは見事に再現している。「召し使いとその主人」という関係がやや時代遅れに思えるくだりもあるが、『Girl With a Pearl Earring』には、最終的にうまいと思わせる工夫が凝らしてあるのだ。

   シュヴァリエは終始一貫して、明快かつ綿密で鋭い観察力に基づいた見事な筆さばきを披露する。シュヴァリエが画家フェルメールへ捧げるオマージュが、そのきめ細やかな文章から読者にも伝わってくる。毎日グリートがこなす一番単調な仕事の様子でさえ、シュヴァリエの手にかかると控えめな輝きを放ち、幸福感に満ちた光景となる。

御主人様が薬屋からお持ち帰りになった象牙や鉛白、セイヨウアカネ、一酸化鉛。そういった材料を混ぜ合わせて絵の具を作るお仕事がだんだん好きになってきた。輝いてまじり気のない美しい色を出せると、本当にうれしいのだ。材料を念入りに混ぜれば混ぜるほど、色にはいっそう深みが出てくる。ざらざらとした冴えないセイヨウアカネの粒がしだいに燃えるような赤い粉へと姿を変え、そこにアマニ油を混ぜると、目の覚めるような色をした絵の具のできあがりだ。うまく混ぜ合わせれば、ほかの色も魔法のように出すことができる。

   シュヴァリエによると、このように詳しく描かれた日常のささいな事柄は、サイモン・シャーマの名著『The Embarrassment of Riches』からヒントを得たらしい。本書は、ここ最近次々と発表された画家をテーマにした一連の作品、デボラ・モガッハの『Tulip Fever』 や スーザン・ブリーランドの『Girl in Hyacinth Blue』の流れをくむものだろう。それにしても、このオランダの芸術黄金時代に題材を見い出した小説はこれからも発表されるのだろうか？ この疑問を説くには時間がいるが、現時点で『Girl With a Pearl Earring』は思索的な歴史フィクションであり、画家フェルメールの魅力的な新しい一面を引き出した傑作だ。 --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

A brilliant historical novel on the corruption of innocence, using the famous painting by Vermeer as an inspiration. Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet's eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

画家フェルメールの家に奉公に出た娘フリートは、主人への淡い思いを募らせ、ついに絵のモデルになる。しかし二人に悲運が……。謎に包まれた巨匠の光と影に迫る全米ベストセラー小説！
--このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

天才画家に淡い思いを寄せ、名画のモデルになった少女の運命は?神秘に包まれたフェルメールの光と影に迫る全米ベストセラー小説。 --このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

オランダの画家フェルメールに淡い思いを寄せ、名画のモデルになった少女の運命は? 史実に基づく歴史小説の要素を多く含み、神秘に包まれたフェルメールの光と影に迫る。 --このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries--and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant--and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model. Chevalier vividly evokes the complex domestic tensions of the household, ruled over by the painter's jealous, eternally pregnant wife and his taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic. Still, Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist.

Throughout, Chevalier cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style, whose exactitude is an effective homage to the painter himself. Even Griet's most humdrum duties take on a high if unobtrusive gloss:

I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical.

In assembling such quotidian particulars, the author acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study The Embarrassment of Riches. Her novel also joins a crop of recent, painterly fictions, including Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever and Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Can novelists extract much more from the Dutch golden age? The question is an open one--but in the meantime, Girl with a Pearl Earring remains a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, and an appealingly new take on an old master. --Jerry Brotton

The Dutch painter Vermeer has remained one of the great enigmas of 17th-century Dutch art. While little is known of his personal life, his extraordinary paintings of natural and domestic life, with their subtle play of light and colour, have come to define the Dutch Golden Age. The mysterious portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has fascinated art historians for centuries, and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centres on Vermeer's prosperous household in Delft in the 1660s. The appointment of the quiet, perceptive heroine of the novel, the servant Griet, gradually throws the household into turmoil as Vermeer and Griet become increasingly intimate, an increasingly tense situation that culminates in her working for Vermeer as his assistant, and ultimately sitting for him as a model. Chevalier deliberately cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style in homage to Vermeer, and the complex domestic tensions of the Vermeer household are vividly evoked, from the jealous, vain, young wife to the wise, taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic, but Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist in its tail. Chevalier acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study of the Dutch Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches, and the novel comes hard on the heels of Deborah Moggach's similar tale of domestic intrigue behind the easel of 17th-century Dutch painting, Tulip Fever.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, but how much more can novelists extract from the Dutch Golden Age? --Jerry Brotton --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

The scant confirmed facts about the life of Vermeer, and the relative paucity of his masterworks, continues to be provoke to the literary imagination, as witnessed by this third fine fictional work on the Dutch artist in the space of 13 months. Not as erotic or as deviously suspenseful as Katharine Weber's The Music Lesson, or as original in conception as Susan Vreeland's interlinked short stories, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Chevalier's first novel succeeds on its own merits. Through the eyes of its protagonist, the modest daughter of a tile maker who in 1664 is forced to work as a maid in the Vermeer household because her father has gone blind, Chevalier presents a marvelously textured picture of 17th-century Delft. The physical appearance of the city is clearly delineated, as is its rigidly defined class system, the grinding poverty of the working people and the prejudice against Catholics among the Protestant majority. From the very first, 16-year-old narrator Griet establishes herself as a keen observer who sees the world in sensuous images, expressed in precise and luminous prose. Through her vision, the personalities of coolly distant Vermeer, his emotionally volatile wife, Catharina, his sharp-eyed and benevolently powerful mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and his increasing brood of children are traced with subtle shading, and the strains and jealousies within the household potently conveyed. With equal skill, Chevalier describes the components of a painting: how colors are mixed from apothecary materials, how the composition of a work is achieved with painstaking care. She also excels in conveying the inflexible class system, making it clear that to members of the wealthy elite, every member of the servant class is expendable. Griet is almost ruined when Vermeer, impressed by her instinctive grasp of color and composition, secretly makes her his assistant, and later demands that she pose for him wearing Catharina's pearl earrings. While Chevalier develops the tension of this situation with skill, several other devices threaten to rob the narrative of its credibility. Griet's ability to suggest to Vermeer how to improve a painting demands one stretch of the reader's imagination. And Vermeer's acknowledgment of his debt to her, revealed in the denouement, is a blatant nod to sentimentality. Still, this is a completely absorbing story with enough historical authenticity and artistic intuition to mark Chevalier as a talented newcomer to the literary scene. Agent, Deborah Schneider.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius ... even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

シュヴァリエ,トレイシー
処女作‘The Virgin Blue’で文学新人賞を射止め、『真珠の耳飾りの少女』が世界で200万部を超える大ベストセラーになり、実力と人気を兼ね備えた作家として高い評価を受けている(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです) --このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。