The largest exhibition dedicated to the Dutch painter Vermeer ended Sunday at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, with a record of around 650,000 visitors, the institution announced.
The exhibition opened in February, immediately breaking its first box office record, with the advance sale of more than 200,000 tickets. When the doors closed, the exhibition had around 650,000 visitors, from 113 countries, which means it was the most successful exhibition in the museum's history, in terms of attendance.
Although the retrospective exhibition is now coming to an end, the museum announced that six of Vermeer's paintings will continue to be exhibited at the Rijksmuseum until October 10th and that the result of the research and study work on the work will be revealed in 2025, when the 350 years since the painter's death.
Last November, when the list of Vermeer's works that would be on display was announced, the director of the Rijksmuseum, Taco Dibbits, said that this exhibition would be "an unprecedented opportunity" for "all those who are passionate about Vermeer, but also for researchers, conservators and art historians" appreciate "such a large number of paintings in one space".
This is because one of the particularities was the gathering of works by Vermeer that are spread across 14 museums or private collections in seven countries, including seven paintings that had not been shown in the Netherlands for more than two centuries, wrote the Associated Press agency.
About the Baroque painter, about whom little is known about his personal life, portraits, landscapes and some paintings of a religious nature were shown, revealing the mastery of the play of light and shadow, says the Rijksmuseum.