The Vermeer family visits Griet's home and she is hired to work as a maid and clean the painter's studio.

Griet arrives at the Vermeer household in the Catholic quarter of Delft and begins her duties as a housemaid.

Vermeer invites Griet to look into the camera obscura and they share their first real conversation about seeing and painting.

Griet learns from Pieter the butcher's son that her sister Agnes has fallen ill with the plague during the quarantine.

Griet arrives home after the quarantine lifts and discovers from her parents' silent grief that Agnes has died.

Vermeer sees Griet bathed in winter light through freshly cleaned studio windows and is inspired to begin a new painting.

Vermeer begins teaching Griet to grind pigments for his paints, making her a secret artistic assistant.

Cornelia steals Catharina's tortoiseshell comb and hides it among Griet's belongings in an attempt to have her dismissed.

Van Ruijven demands to be painted alongside Griet at a dinner celebrating the completion of one of Vermeer's paintings.

Maria Thins and Vermeer negotiate with van Ruijven so that Griet will be painted alone rather than with him.

Griet pierces her own ear alone by candlelight at night and faints from the shock, preparing to wear Catharina's earring.

Vermeer inserts the pearl earring into Griet's swollen, infected ear during their final sitting, and they share an erotically charged moment.

Catharina is led to the studio and discovers the painting of Griet wearing her pearl earrings, then tries to slash the canvas with a knife.

Griet walks out of the Vermeer house and stands at the eight-pointed star in Market Square, choosing her next path.

Griet pawns the pearl earrings Vermeer left her and uses the money to settle his family's long-standing debt to Pieter.

Griet is a sixteen-year-old hired as a maid for painter Johannes Vermeer after her father loses his sight and the family falls into poverty. She develops a natural affinity for Vermeer's artistic world, becoming first his studio cleaner and then his secret assistant, learning to grind paints and help compose his scenes. When Vermeer's wealthy patron van Ruijven threatens to have Griet painted alongside him, risking her reputation, Vermeer and his mother-in-law arrange for her to be painted alone as a compromise. The painting requires Griet to wear Catharina's pearl earrings, and she must secretly pierce her own ear to do so, an act that costs her enormously. The plan unravels when Catharina discovers the portrait of Griet wearing her jewelry and attacks the painting in a rage, forcing Griet to leave the household forever. A decade later, Griet receives the earrings as a bequest from the dying Vermeer and sells them, using the money to clear his family's debt and free herself completely from his world.

The headline events that bring Griet from hired maid to the subject of Vermeer's masterpiece.

Griet meets Tanneke the cook, who shows her the house and explains she will sleep in the cellar and handle laundry.

Griet slaps Cornelia near the canal when the child laughs at her gentle warning about the water's edge.

Griet accompanies Tanneke to the market for the first time and meets Pieter the butcher at his stall.

On her first Sunday visit home, Griet attempts to describe Vermeer's painting in progress to her blind father.

Griet turns her back on her sister Agnes at the market to avoid introducing her to Maertge Vermeer.

Griet is refused permission to leave the Vermeer household to check on her family during the plague quarantine.

Vermeer completes Woman with a Pearl Necklace and Griet has her first uneasy encounter with van Ruijven, his patron.

Catharina gives birth to her sixth child, and van Ruijven corners Griet at the birth celebration before Pieter intervenes.

Vermeer asks Griet to fetch painting supplies from the apothecary, and she begins formally assisting him in the studio.

Pieter the butcher's son begins attending Griet's family church and is formally introduced to her parents.

Griet rearranges the blue cloth in Vermeer's studio scene and Vermeer tells her he had not expected to learn from a maid.

Vermeer asks Griet to pull back her cap and winds strips of blue and yellow cloth into a turban for her to wear while sitting.

Van Leeuwenhoek warns Griet that Vermeer is deeply selfish and that she must take care to remain herself.

Pieter arrives at the Vermeer house on Griet's eighteenth birthday to propose marriage, but she turns him away without an answer.

Tanneke approaches Griet at the butcher stall after ten years and delivers a summons to visit the Vermeer household.

From her first days meeting the household cook Tanneke and the troublemaking child Cornelia, Griet navigates a web of competing loyalties and quiet dangers as a maid. She maintains a painful distance from her own family, even turning her back on her dying sister at the market to avoid mixing her two worlds. While Griet is drawn deeper into Vermeer's artistic life, the butcher's son Pieter pursues her as a potential husband, with her parents quietly encouraging the match. The power struggles within the Vermeer household intensify as Cornelia schemes against Griet and Catharina grows suspicious of the studio's closed door. As the painting of Griet nears completion, van Leeuwenhoek warns her of the danger Vermeer's selfishness poses, and Pieter formally proposes marriage on the very morning of her final sitting. Ten years later, when Tanneke summons Griet back to the household after Vermeer's death, she returns as a settled butcher's wife rather than the impressionable girl who once cleaned his studio.

The daily life, relationships, and hidden struggles behind Griet's years in the Vermeer household.

Griet and Maria Thins share their quiet admiration for the painting Vermeer is working on during Griet's first week of employment.

Cornelia breaks the tile Griet's blind father painted of Griet and her brother, splitting the two figures cleanly apart.

Pieter tells Griet about a maid previously impregnated by van Ruijven, and Griet suddenly sees a version of her own possible fate.

Griet's parents invite Pieter to Sunday dinner and Griet feels that a deal has been made, trading her for a butcher's provisions.

Pieter guides Griet into an alley and kisses her for the first time, then tries to reach under her cap to feel her hair.

Cornelia steals red madder pigment and stains Griet's apron with it, threatening to expose her secret work in the studio.

Catharina discovers that Griet has been acting as Vermeer's assistant and, rather than dismissing her, becomes frightened of her instead.

Van Ruijven's wife sits perfectly still and gazes into space while Vermeer paints her, and Griet tries to imitate her blank tranquility.

Griet's mother declares that Vermeer's paintings are not good for the soul, and Griet later asks Vermeer whether his paintings are Catholic.

Griet views the nearly finished portrait of herself and realizes the painting will only be complete if she wears Catharina's pearl earrings.

Vermeer walks into the storeroom and sees Griet with her hair entirely uncovered and loose around her shoulders.

After Vermeer sees her hair, Griet seeks out Pieter and they have sexual intercourse together for the first time.

Catharina goes into labor and drops the palette knife, which spins across the floor to Griet's feet; Griet refuses to pick it up.

Griet returns to the Vermeer house after ten years and Franciscus, now grown, recognizes her as the lady in the painting.

Catharina reluctantly hands Griet the pearl earrings, telling her that Vermeer has already decided for both of them.

Griet's time in the Vermeer household is defined by a series of quiet revelations that pull her steadily away from her roots and toward a world she can never truly belong to. She sees her family's fragility reflected in a broken tile and understands her parents' calculation when they welcome the butcher's son Pieter as a suitor. Her growing intimacy with Vermeer's world is shadowed by the cold lesson of watching van Ruijven's wife reduce herself to a motionless object to please the painter, and by her mother's uneasy judgment about what Vermeer's art represents. The crisis arrives when Griet recognizes that Catharina's pearl earrings are the missing element in her own portrait, and when Vermeer accidentally sees her hair uncovered, an act of exposure that breaks something loose in her. She transfers that unraveling into her first sexual encounter with Pieter, choosing the real world over Vermeer's orbit. The story closes not with drama but with a quiet exchange — Catharina handing over the earrings, and Griet choosing to sell rather than keep what they represent.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional turning points that shape Griet's coming of age.