Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted by Vermeer in 1665, might just be the most famous and beloved portrait in the world.
But who is the girl?
Well, that's the thing. There was no girl, because this isn't a portrait...
Hence the proliferation of wonderful Dutch landscape artists during the Golden Age, like Jacob van Ruisdael, who painted the real world unadorned and without the idealising, classical spirit of the Italian Renaissance and its successor movements.
Ordinary beauty.