In an event that brings together a large part of the paintings of the artist Johannes Vermeer, the largest ever retrospective exhibition dedicated to the Dutch Golden Age painter was finally opened in Amsterdam, according to Agence France-Presse. It is noteworthy that the exhibition includes famous masterpieces, including “The Milk Wheel” and “The Girl with a Pearl Earring”, among 28 paintings loaned from galleries and private collections from all over the world.
The Rijksmuseum, where the event will be held until June 4, had sold more than 200,000 tickets even before the exhibition opened last Friday, which is unprecedented in the museum’s history.
A spokesman for the museum, in front of which there were queues at the opening, said, “Tickets have been exhausted for the months of February (February) and March (March), while tickets for April (April) are on their way to depletion.” “We don’t mind standing in line, but I came here to see my favorite painting in the whole world, Girl with a Pearl Earring,” said Athos Millington Ward, 83, from the town of Augustgeist in the western Netherlands.
This painting, one of the most famous in the history of painting, is usually displayed at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. Vermeer did not paint many paintings in his career, as their number approached 35, and little is known about his short life (1632-1675).
The director of the Rijksmuseum, Taco Dibbets, said that Vermeer’s paintings are famous for their brightness and local scenes of Dutch life in the seventeenth century, and for the “extreme beauty” in the scenes in which time appears to have stopped.