Michael White takes in the Rijksmuseum’s show on the life, work and faith of Johannes Vermeer.
Within the world’s great art collections, Titians, Rembrandts and Picassos come as standard. But to have just one Vermeer gracing your walls is something else: a prize beyond compare. Perhaps the most exclusive and elusive painter of the first rank, there are only 37 recognised Vermeers known to survive. And though they’re generally small, quiet evocations of the same idealised Dutch interior, their jewel-like quality gives them a treasured status. Which is why their owners rarely lend them, and you never find them brought together for big international exhibitions. Until now.
