In 2023, the first major Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, with loans from around the world

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will devote a retrospective exhibition for the first time in its history, in the spring of 2023, to Johannes Vermeer, the 17th-century Dutch master and author of the celebrated painting depicting the Girl with a Pearl Earring. According to the museum’s own announcement, this could be the largest exhibition on Vermeer ever, with loans from around the world. The last exhibition in the Netherlands devoted to Vermeer was held in 1996 at the Mauritshuis, where twenty-two paintings by the Delft master were on display: with more than 450,000 visitors, it was the most visited exhibition in the museum’s history. The Rijksmuseum already has four of the artist’s masterpieces in its collections, including the Milkmaid and the Delft Street, but masterpieces such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring from the Mauritshuis, The Geographer from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Woman Writing a Letter in the Presence of a Maid from the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, and The Pearl Weigher from the National Gallery in Washington will arrive at the museum for the major exhibition. Also arriving will be works never before exhibited to the public in the Netherlands, such as the recently restored Woman Reading a Letter in Front of a Window from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.

“Vermeer, along with Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Mondrian, is one of the most famous painters in the Netherlands,” said Taco Dibbits director of the Rijksmuseum. “We would not have believed it possible that so many museums would be willing to lend their masterpieces. We are incredibly grateful to them for this. With this exhibition we can introduce a new generation to Vermeer’s painting and present the results of the latest research.” "We are overjoyed to lend The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Vermeer’s most famous painting in the world," said Martine Gosselink director of the Mauritshuis. “For this unique collaboration, it will be exhibited with two other works from the Mauritshuis, Vermeer’s View of Delft and Diana and her Nymphs. We will miss her terribly, but a Vermeer exhibition without the Girl is simply not a Vermeer exhibition.”

For the exhibition, the Rijksmuseum is working with a team of conservators and restorers from the Mauritshuis in The Hague to examine Vermeer’s paintings in the Netherlands. Other works by the artist from other collections are also involved in this examination. The two institutions are conducting research on Vermeer’s art, his artistic choices and compositions, and the process of making his paintings.

In conjunction with the exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, the Museum Prinsenhof Del ft is organizing the exhibition Vermeer’s Delft to be held from February 10 to June 4, 2023: for the first time, the cultural and historical context in which Vermeer’s art flourished will be presented. Local contemporary works will be exhibited alongside Delft ceramics and carpets, archival materials and personal documents.

Image: Johannes Vermeer, The Girl with the Pearl Earring or The Girl with the Turban, detail (ca. 1665; oil on canvas, 44.5 x 39 cm; The Hague, Mauritshuis)

In 2023, the first major Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, with loans from around the world

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