Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring has its 350th birthday this year, so what better way to celebrate this incredible work of art than with the film, Exhibition On Screen: Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Narrated by the acclaimed British actor Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Exhibition On Screen: Girl with a Pearl Earring gives cinema-goers unparalleled access to the world-renowned Mauritshuis Museum — what some call “the jewel of Northern Europe’s museums” — as well as detailed, fascinating, illuminating insight into the extraordinary work by one of the great Dutch masters, Johannes Vermeer.
Girl with A Pearl Earring from circa 1665 is one of the most enduring paintings in the history of art, and Vermeer was “the master of light.” His talent is beautifully depicted in Girl with a Pearl Earring — one of the world’s most intriguing portraits — in the softness of the girl’s face, the glimmers of light that touch her lips, and of course the shining pearl.
A recent world tour garnered huge queues of art enthusiasts who lined up for a glimpse of the majestic beauty of Girl with a Pearl Earring. More than a million visitors went to see it in Tokyo, making that exhibition the largest in the world in 2012.
Interest in this most iconic of Vermeer’s works was clearly heightened by Tracy Chevalier’s blockbuster novel Girl with a Pearl Earring and Peter Webber’s subsequent 2003 film, starring Hollywood A-listers Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.
But there’s more to the story than that.
Following two years of extensive renovations, King Willem-Alexander reopened the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, The Netherlands, in June 2014. A bright and spacious new underground foyer connects the Royal Dutch Shell Wing to the historical seventeenth-century building, which has been thoroughly renovated and embellished. World art critics gave a unanimous 5-star review to this wonderfully refreshed venue.
The Mauritshuis displays a collection of world-famous paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters from the Golden Age. Masterpieces such as The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt, The Goldfinch by Fabritius, The Bull by Potter, and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring are on permanent display in the intimate rooms of this majestic seventeenth-century house.
With Exhibition On Screen: Girl with a Pearl Earring, film-goers get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at these and other treasures on display within the Mauritshuis, as the film seeks to answer the questions that have haunted art lovers for decades: Who was she? Why is it so popular? Why and how was it painted?
Many of the clues that the film finds lie in other masterpieces housed in the collection.
The US premiere of Exhibition On Screen: Girl with a Pearl Earring happens at select theatres across the country, and screening dates (beginning 23 June 2015) are limited, so visit Fandango to get your tickets today.
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