Berlin / Amsterdam (dpa) – With five masterpieces by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) from Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is preparing for ‘the greatest exhibition of all time’ with works by the Delft painter.
For «Vermeer», «The glass of wine» (approx. 1659-61) and the «Young woman with a pearl necklace» (approx. 1662-64) are launched in the Berlin Picture Gallery, in the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden
packaged “At the Prosecutor’s Office” (1656) and “Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window” (ca. 1657–58), the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main contributes “The Geographer” (1669).
The museum wants to regulate the rush expected in Amsterdam from 10 February to 4 June with time slots. “We want it to be beautiful,” said dpa Berlin curator Gregor Weber. Larger crowds of people should be avoided in front of Vermeer’s often small-format images.
The museum reckons with about half a million interested people. At the exhibition of Rembrandt’s last works seven years ago, it was already “very crowded” with 525,000 visitors.
For the exhibition, those responsible have brought together 28 of only 35 paintings by the Dutch master worldwide. Some works are too fragile to be transported, others are tied to a specific place in the museum by specifics such as bequests of donations.
All seven Dutch Vermeers and some of the loans were analyzed for the exhibition using new technical methods. For example, the work “Servant with a Milk Jug” from about 1658-1660 from the collection of the Rijksmuseum was found to hide a shelf with jugs and a brazier under the blank wall to the right.
According to Weber, the exhibition also aims to demonstrate that Vermeer “wasn’t just a tinkerer who spent six months painting a picture”. Rather, he “thought for four months and then painted for a month.” The first drafts of the following meticulously crafted works were sketched by Vermeer “often very quickly”.
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