Vermeer exhibition featuring Girl with a Pearl Earring is first – and probably last – time so many of the Dutch painter’s works can be seen together

An exhibition at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum features 28 works by Johannes Vermeer, including Girl with a Pearl Earring; popularised by Scarlett Johansson film

It’s the first time so many of the 17th century Dutch artist’s works have been in one place; demand is high to see what may be the last Vermeer show of its size

3-MIN READ3-MIN

“Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665) by Johannes Vermeer. An exhibition at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum features this famous painting and 27 others, in the show of Vermeers ever assembled. Photo: Rijksmuseum/Johannes Vermeer

Published: 4:15pm, 28 Feb 2023Updated: 11:33am, 1 Mar 2023

For a blockbuster exhibition, “Vermeer”, which opened at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum on February 10, is surprisingly small.

Seventy per cent of the Dutch master’s known works are on display, but this still amounts to just 28 paintings, making the exhibition digestible and approachable, much like the paintings themselves.

“Vermeer” is an art exhibition as much for people who don’t usually go to galleries as for those who do.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) is undoubtedly the most famous piece in the exhibition. Thanks to the 2003 Hollywood treatment of the novel of the same name, with Scarlett Johannson as the painting’s oh-so-kissable moist-mouthed subject, this image is now as well known as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Scarlett Johansson (left) and British actor Colin Firth in a still from “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (2003).

The young woman in a blue-and-yellow turban gazes out at the viewer with a frankness that some commentators regarded as immoral.