On Monday March, 13 it is time for a new edition of Docupodium. This time director Suzanne Raes and camera operator Victor Horstink are our special guests to talk about the documentary Dicht bij Vermeer. In this documentary they show how the largest Vermeer exhibition ever - which can be seen this year at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - came about.
Please note: this program is in Dutch. To fully appreciate this film you have to be able to understand Dutch.
Dicht bij Vermeer
In 1902, the famous French writer Marcel Proust visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague. There, he came face to face with Johannes Vermeer's View of Delft. The painting made a crushing impression; in his eyes, this was "the most beautiful painting in the world".
Vermeer (1632-1675) left a small but very special oeuvre, with subdued, often tranquil depictions, set in an inimitably beautiful colour palette, in which the use of yellow and blue is particularly striking. Reason enough for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to organise the largest retrospective ever in 2023.
In this film, filmmaker Suzanne Raes shows how this exhibition came about. How did the curators involved manage to get all those Vermeer paintings to the Netherlands? She especially looks at the role of Vermeer expert and curator Gregor Weber, for whom this exhibition is the absolute crowning achievement and at the same time the capstone of his career.