Visitors gripe over missing Girl with a Pearl Earring

Visitors are still packing in to the Vermeer blockbuster at the Rijksmuseum which runs until 4 June (get a ticket if you can- good luck). A correspondent from The Art Newspaper was fortunate enough to bag entry to the show last week and was naturally bowled over by the numerous masterpieces on display (more than 20). But there were still collective gasps from the crowd of mainly upper middle-class Brits on discovering that Vermeer’s most famous work, The Girl with a Pearl Earring (around 1665), had gone back home to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The museum states clearly online and in the exhibition that the crowdpleasing painting was due to be returned on 30 March (it can also be explored in the museum’s informative online tour of the show). The painting was always going to be on show for eight weeks, the director of the Mauritshuis, Martine Gosselink, told Dutch News. "We have said that from the start and the Rijksmuseum knew as well," she said. But that won’t stop the hordes of disgruntled Vermeer devotees from griping (perhaps buying a postcard is the answer).