The Mauritshuis Museum in Holland will be lending Vermeer’s Girl A With Pearl Earring to a Japanese museum this fall.
The museum announced on Thursday that the painting will travel to the Nakanoshima Museum in Osaka for the fall season. The painting is easily the most popular and iconic work in the museum’s collection, and the reason behind the majority of its footfall. As such, the Mauritshuis Museum has rarely ever parted from the Johannes Vermeer masterpiece. The last time it left the museum was in 2023, when it was loaned to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for its highly successful Vermeer retrospective. This time, the museum is loaning the painting only because they would be closing down in August and September for much-needed renovations.
Girl With A Pearl Earring is one of the only 34 paintings painted by Johannes Vermeer during his lifetime, and easily the most recognizable. The work gained fame when it was featured as the central theme of a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson. Since then, it has remained one of the most popular paintings in the world.
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The loan to Japan was possible due to the initiatives of The Asahi Shimbun Company, a Japanese media giant. The company not only sponsored the loan of the painting, but also entered a four-year partnership with the Mauritshuis Museum. Speaking about the upcoming loan, Martine Gosselink (General Director, Mauritshuis Museum) said: “For the Mauritshuis, the Girl’s trip to Japan is a unique opportunity for us to share her with the Japanese public, perhaps for the very last time.”
