Vermeer Newsletter no. 46

December 21, 2021

EXHIBITION

1.
Major Vermeer Exhibition
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
February 10 – June 4, 2023

The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)  has just announced that in collaboration with the Mauritshuis (The Hague) it will stage the largest Vermeer exhibition ever. Until now, the most ambitious Vermeer exhibition was the 1995/1996 exhibit with 23 paintings in The Hague (21 in Washington). Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s general director, expects to get 24 pictures by Vermeer—and hopefully a few more. Twenty-four paintings would already account for more than 2/3 of the artist's surviving output.

Due to the fragility of Vermeer's canvases coupled with the growing competition among museums for loans, Dibbits believes that a show, which on this scale is likely not to happen again, will provide a new generation of researchers and public a unique chance to study many of Vermeer's major works side by side. For this exhibition, the Rijksmuseum is working closely with the Mauritshuis with a team of curators, restorers and natural scientists to examine in depth the seven paintings by Vermeer in Dutch possession. Works by Vermeer from other collections are also involved in this project.

In addition to the works owned by the two museums, which include The Milkmaid and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, other confirmed major loans to the show include The Girl with a Pearl Earring (from Mauritshuis), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (National Gallery of Ireland), Woman Holding a Balance (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), and Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden). Additions will be made public as they are gradually confirmed.

EXHIBITION

2.
Vermeer’s Delft
Museum Prinsenhof of Delft
February 10 – June 4,  2023

Parallel to the Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum, Museum Prinsenhof of Delft will organize the exhibition Vermeer’s Delft (10 February to 4 June 2023). This will be the first-ever exhibition to explore in depth the cultural-historical context in which Vermeer's practice flourished. Works by Delft contemporaries are displayed alongside Delft pottery, Delft carpets, archival materials and letters.

View of Delft with a Fantasy Loggia
Daniël Vosmaer
1663
Oil on canvas
Museum Prinsenhof Delft (loan from the Cultural Heritage Agency)

EXHIBITION

3.
JOHANNES VERMEER AND 17TH-CENTURY PAINTING
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
January 22 – April 3, 2022
https://www.tobikan.jp/en/exhibition/2021_dresden.html

Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window will be displayed in Japan for the first time after a thorough restoration revealed a “picture-within-a-picture” showing a Cupid, which had been previously believed to have been painted over by the artist himself. Also featured will be some sixty 17th-century Dutch paintings from the collection of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, including important works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Gabriël Metsu and Jacob van Ruisdael.