THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – “The Girl With a Pearl Earring” has come home.
After a two-year global tour that drew record crowds in Japan, Italy and the United States, Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 masterpiece and other works from the Netherlands’ 17th-century Golden Age have returned home to the newly renovated Mauritshuis museum in the Hague.
Both the museum and the collection have been changed by their time apart. The small Mauritshuis building, a classic of Dutch architecture, has been expanded and reorganized to accommodate the demands of modern tourists. Meanwhile, the Mauritshuis’ profile has been raised by the international exposure for its treasures including works by Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.
“We really hope that we put the name on the international map,” Emilie Gordenker, the museum’s U.S. director, said in an interview ahead of the museum’s reopening June 27.
“‘The Girl With The Pearl Earring,’ which is increasingly called the ‘Mona Lisa of the North,’ is the icon, there’s no denying it. She’s a great ambassador for us. But what we notice is that people come for ‘The Girl,’ but they stay for the rest.”