Coming to Turin ’s Palazzo Madama from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will be Johannes Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, starring from March 5 to June 29, 2026 in a new project entitled Encounter with the Masterpiece. The initiative inaugurates a series of events that will bring celebrated works of ancient and modern art to the Piedmontese capital to offer visitors the opportunity for close encounters with masterpieces of art history.
The initiative is not limited to presenting illustrious loans, but offers study and appreciation paths built around each guest work. Each exhibition is conceived as a critical narrative, capable of interweaving scientific research, popularization and interdisciplinary dialogue, with the aim of opening new interpretative perspectives on artistic heritage.
In this context, Vermeer’s painting is proposed not only as a masterful example of luminous balance and domestic intimacy, but as an expression of deeply meditative painting. The Dutch artist thus emerges as the author of a mental vision, the result of a radical change in the way of observing and representing reality, matured in the lively Dutch cultural season of the seventeenth century.
Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is one of four paintings by Vermeer that the Rijksmuseum owns, along with The Milkmaid, The Little Street, and The Love Letter. Immersed in an atmosphere of silence and intimacy, the young protagonist is focused on reading a letter, illuminated by the clear morning light. She is still wearing her blue house dress, a sign of a private moment suspended in time. In the composition, every hue seems subordinate to the brilliant intensity of the lapis lazuli blue, which dominates the scene and defines its color balance.
Vermeer observes and returns the effects of light with almost analytical precision. Particularly surprising is the choice to model the complexion with delicate shades of light gray and to paint the shadows cast on the wall with light blue glazes, innovative solutions that give the image a luminous vibration and a refined sense of naturalness.
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| A Vermeer masterpiece arrives in Turin from the Rijksmuseum: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter at Palazzo Madama |
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