LIKE COUNTRY LIFE, the Mauritshuis in The Hague is famous for its frontispiece. Unlike us, however, it has only one Girl with a Pearl Earring (Fig 1), so her absence until June, during her visit to Amsterdam to star in the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, could have been a difficult time for the museum, but staff have come up with an imaginative way literally to fill her space.
More intimate and whispered art, I have never seen
People come from all around the world to see her and the Mauritshuis receives numerous drawings, self-portraits and other creative responses to the: ‘As a museum, we are of course mad about collecting, so we have launched the Instagram so that we can share the most remarkable versions of the painting that we receive,’ it proclaims.
