Meeting Vermeer in Holland. It’s the end of your travel through time and space. 15 december is the death anniversary of the Delft painter. On 3 December 2018 a special museum opened its doors. It shows all 37 works of the Golden Age painter. This is where you start your journey.
Vermeer’s oeuvre in one place
It is an amazing project. Google Arts & Culture launched Meet Vermeer. Together with 18 cultural partners in Europe and the US they created a website full of background stories about the “Master of Light”. Directors of the art institutes and specialists inform and give their view on the Delft painter and his work. There are articles, video’s and of course, lots of images of art. The explanations of the paintings, their symbolism, techniques will astonish you. All images of the paintings are in high resolution and you can even zoom in into miniscule details. You even get a chance to see the painting ‘The concert’ which is missing since 1990. That means that you really see the entire oeuvre of Vermeer! And that’s not all.
Walk the streets with Vermeer
The Meet Vermeer project also includes a very special experience. You can find it through the Google Arts & Culture app. Start the Pocket Gallery and enter the virtual museum. Google used actual Street View photography taken inside the museums. This way you get the feeling you’re walking through the corridors of all the participating cultural institutions like the Frick Collection and even through Queen Elizabeth II’s Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Possibly the best part of this augmented reality experience is that you can get closer to the paintings than in the actual museums.
Vermeer in the Dutch museums
The virtual museum is a great start of a journey to get to know the Delft painter. It makes you itch, because seeing the paintings in real life is different. Step two in this travel to meet Vermeer in Holland is visiting the actual museums. Now, I’m fortunate to be living near the Mauritshuis, where both View on Delft and the Girl with the Pearl Earring are located. Even Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is nearby, where I can enjoy The Milkmaid, The Love Letter, the Street of Vermeer and Woman Reading a Letter. I do recommend visiting both museums, as the buildings already play a part in the experience.
This is in the Rijksmuseum. I’m mesmirised by it. It was painted 360 years ago. For 200 of those years, Vermeer of Delft had largely been forgotten. pic.twitter.com/fVV0YGnP3d
— Darran Anderson (@Oniropolis) March 15, 2018
Meet Vermeer in Holland
Now while you’re in the Netherlands, visit Delft. Visit the historical city centre and see where the Golden Age artist met his friends, where his family lived. Follow his footsteps and meet Vermeer in Holland. Or be Vermeer. Become the famous painter or the Girl with the Pearl Earring in the Vermeer Challenge, great for when you’re visiting the Netherlands with a group of friends or family. Or explore Holland by bike and visit the surroundings of Delft. Hear his love story near the shed where he got married and eat, drink what the artist enjoyed in a Cycle Tour Delft Countryside
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