Vermeers gathered for blockbuster 'party'- but is it the last?

For once, say its curators, “the chance of a lifetime” may be right: never before have so many works by Johannes Vermeer, the luminous 17th-century Dutch master, been assembled in the same place – and it is highly unlikely they will be again.

- Jon Henley

Of the fewer than 40 paintings most experts currently attribute to the artist, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has obtained 28. Opening this week, its first Vermeer retrospective has sold more advance tickets than any show in the museum’s history.

“Vermeer makes the clock stop,” Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum’s general director, said. “He gives you the feeling you are there, with that person, in that room, and that time has stopped. And time, most especially today, is what we all long for.”

Born in 1632, Vermeer is the most enigmatic of the Dutch masters. Besides his canvases, nothing of him remains: no letters, writings or diary. Trained as an artist, his work was barely recognised during his lifetime, mainly because, in a strongly Protestant country, he converted to Catholicism when he married at the age of 21.

Museums and private owners in seven countries have loaned masterpieces for the blockbuster show, including almost all of the intimate, atmospherically lit domestic scenes for which Vermeer is best known.

London’s National Gallery has sent Young Woman Seated at a Virginal and the Louvre in Paris supplied The Lacemaker. Others have come from Dublin, Berlin, New York and Tokyo.