The Mauritshuis Museum in Holland to Lend Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring to Japanese Museum

Holland’s Mauritshuis museum in The Hague announced on Thursday that the best-known work in its collection, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, will travel to Japan this fall. The news was reported by the Japan Times.

The 17th-century masterpiece will be on temporary loan to the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka while the Dutch museum is closed for renovations in August and September. The painting was last loaned to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for its 2023 Vermeer retrospective.

“Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the most famous paintings in the world,” the museum said, “and is a key reason for many people to visit the Mauritshuis. It is therefore loaned to other institutions only in highly exceptional circumstances.”

One of only 34 known paintings by Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring depicts a young woman, wearing exotic headgear and the titular bauble, looking back at the viewer with her lips parted. It received global attention after inspiring a best-selling novel of the same name, which was adapted into a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson.

The Osaka presentation will be underwritten by Japanese media conglomerate The Asahi Shimbun Company, which will also serve as a project partner to the Mauritshuis for the next four years. The museum will use The Asahi Shimbun Company’s support to fund alterations to its properties, including a new education center slated to open in 2028.

“For the Mauritshuis, the Girl’s trip to Japan is an unique opportunity for us to share her with the Japanese public, perhaps for the very last time,” said Martine Gosselink, general director of the Mauritshuis, in a statement.