(The Hague) Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum on Thursday unveiled its intention to organize the largest exhibition ever devoted to the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, which will notably show his iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring.
The unprecedented exhibition, scheduled for 2023, will bring together under one roof works from museums around the world to shed light on the life and career of the elusive Dutch master of the 17th century.e century.
An exhibition organized in The Hague in 1996, which brought together 22 works by the painter, is to date the most ambitious exhibition devoted to Vermeer.
But the exhibition – from February 10 to June 4, 2023 – promises to “show more works” than the exhibition organized in 1996, said AFP the director of the Rijksmuseum Taco Dibbits, while noting that “We will not have them all”.
Some 35 works have been attributed to Vermeer, renowned for his mastery of the use of light, sublimated in particular on the painting of The Milkmaid, one of the four Vermeers belonging to the Rijksmuseum.
“It amazed me that in almost a century of organizing exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum […] we’ve never had a monographic exhibition on him, ”Dibbits added.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring, the much-loved masterpiece that inspired a 2003 blockbuster novel and Hollywood film starring Scarlett Johansson, will be on loan from another Dutch museum, Mauritshuis, which will collaborate with the Rijksmuseum on the exhibition.
Little is known about Vermeer (1632-1675), who lived a modest life in the historic city of Delft during the Dutch “golden age” of painting.
The two museums “will study Vermeer’s artistic talent, his artistic choices and the motivations behind his compositions, as well as the creative process of his paintings,” said the Rijksmuseum.
Among the other works on loan are the Woman writing a letter and her maid of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the Woman holding a balance from the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
“Vermeer is someone who is obscured by mystery, there are so few written sources about him,” Mr. Dibbits said.