The girl in Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl with a Pearl Earring has inspired a best-selling historical novel, a play, and a movie starring Scarlett Johannson. Now you too have the rare opportunity to view the famous “Dutch Mona Lisa” in person, which comes to our city as the first stop on its U.S. tour, while its current home in The Hague undergoes renovations. The exhibition “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis” celebrates works by Dutch masters of the Golden Age. While the title painting by Vermeer is perhaps the most well-known, the others are no less striking, including four evocative paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, hyperreal oil paintings by Jan Steen and Gerard ter Borch, and The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritus, a pupil of Rembrandt’s. “This is the pinnacle of excellence for the Fine Arts Museums,” says Diane Wilsey, president of the museum’s Board of Trustees. “I doubt we’ll ever have paintings of this quality again.”
