Girl with a Pearl Earring

Book excerpt: This volume will mark the first time Johannes Vermeer's iconic painting will be seen in the Southeast. The painting headlines the exhibition, which highlights the artistic genius of Dutch Golden Age painters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, through the presentation of more than 35 exceptional works. Through landscapes and portraits, this book will explore the idea that Dutch artists more readily embraced paintings of everyday subjects than their southern European contemporaries, focusing on capturing commonplace scenes of daily life. Dutch artists not only recorded representations of the domestic interior, still lifes and boisterous crowds, but often imbued these scenes with moral undertones and humorous, sarcastic wit. (Exhibition: High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA (22.6.-29.9.2013)).