Food for the Soul: Women Alone – Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum
Johannes Vermeer. The Milkmaid, 1658-1659. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt. Photo: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout
The sold-out, long-touted, once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is in full swing—crowds of lucky ticket-holders are thronging through a few small rooms. But perhaps this is the right space to exhibit these intimate, delicate pictures that hung forgotten for 200 years until they became the most sought-after works in art history. Out of about 35 Vermeer paintings in existence (and probably no more than 50 that he ever painted), the Rijks is proudly displaying 28 of them, including rarely seen religious works and paintings from collections in Dublin, Germany, and the UK.