 | Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is back in the Hague after a two-year international tour. It now hangs proudly on a silk-lined wall of the Mauritshuis -- the handsome 17th-century mansion that reopens this week after a 30 million euro ($40.8 million) refurbishment. |
| Architect Hans van Heeswijk (one to watch) has doubled the museum space without making noticeable changes to the original house. How? By building a luminous, Louvre-style underground foyer, and carving a new wing out of an existing nextdoor building. There, you'll find a new exhibition gallery, brasserie, shop, and education space - all accessible from the foyer. |  |
The museum's dynamic young director Emilie Gordenker and her staff are bracing for a frenzy around Vermeer's Girl, now a Gaga-like global celebrity thanks to the novel (by Tracy Chevalier) and movie. Only 30 visitors at a time can crowd around her, yet flashless photography is authorized. So expect an explosion of selfies as soon as the museum reopens on June 27. |
 | Hanging between two windows in Room 14 is another masterpiece namechecked by a bestseller: Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch. A separate visitor onslaught is expected on account of the Donna Tartt novel, so the museum has hung the work on a wall by itself. The Mauritshuis is not the first museum to acknowledge novel/movie tie-ins. The Louvre embraced The Da Vinci Code to the point of allowing the blockbuster to be filmed in its galleries. |
Still, there is SO much in the Mauritshuis besides a goldfinch and a pearl earring! Two roomfuls of Rembrandts that will knock your socks off, not to mention Rubens portraits, a wall of Holbeins, saucy genre paintings by Jan Steen...Here are a couple of fabulous Rembrandts to whet your appetite:
 |  | So put the Mauritshuis back on your art map - and block off time to see it. Even if you're not a painting fanatic, there's just so much splendor to take in. (Photographs by Farah Nayeri). |
