Johannes Vermeer

The Hague was the second and final venue of the Vermeer retrospective organized by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Frederik J. Duparc, following its showing in Washington. The Mauritshuis hung twenty-three paintings, two more than the twenty-one shown in Washington: The Milkmaid and The Love Letter, both lent by the Rijksmuseum, were added for The Hague. The exhibition opened on 1 March 1996 and drew visitors from across Europe.

More than 460,000 people filed past the paintings, a figure the Mauritshuis would normally take three years to reach rather than three months. Fifty-five percent of those who came were visiting the Mauritshuis for the first time, and despite the density of the crowds Duparc reported that the galleries stayed quiet and the visitors attentive before the works.

The exhibition was also a marked financial success. Early estimates put the revenue it generated within the Netherlands, counting hotel stays, transport, souvenirs, and domestically sold tickets, at roughly 130 million guilders. The Mauritshuis itself cleared about one million guilders. Its costs of some 8.5 million guilders were largely covered by the 430,000 paying visitors, each charged twenty guilders, while the shop supplied the surplus: nearly 100,000 catalogues were sold, close to one in four visitors against a typical rate of one in fifteen. The proceeds allowed the museum to set aside its first reserve since its privatization in early 1995.