Woman with a Pearl Necklace

Vermeer lived and worked in Delft, where he must have painted Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace in the years between 1662 and 1665. It is assumed that the local art collector Pieter Claesz van Ruijven was the first owner of the painting. It was probably passed on in his family and at the end of the century, it belonged to the Delft local Jacob Abrahmsz Dissius who had married van Ruijven’s daughter and who owned no less than 21 paintings by Vermeer.