Vermeer's Secrets

Vermeer’s Secrets (October 8, 2022–January 8, 2023) was a focused, research-oriented exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It presented the museum’s complete holdings of works by or attributed to Johannes Vermeer—Woman Holding a Balance (ca. 1664), A Lady Writing (ca. 1665), Girl with the Red Hat (ca. 1669), and Girl with a Flute (c. 1669/1675)—together with two twentieth-century forgeries that had entered the collection as Vermeers: The Lacemaker and The Smiling Girl (both c. 1925, attributed to Theodorus van Wijngaarden). Curated by Marjorie E. “Betsy” Wieseman and Alexandra Libby, the intimate installation used the juxtaposition of the autograph paintings, the disputed work, and the known fakes to explore connoisseurship, technique, and attribution.

The show was the public culmination of a sustained technical campaign conducted largely during the museum’s pandemic closure. A team of curators, conservators, and imaging scientists—including E. Melanie Gifford, Dina Anchin, John K. Delaney, and Kathryn A. Dooley—combined decades of traditional examination with advanced noninvasive imaging methods such as hyperspectral reflectance imaging and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy. The results, published in a special 2022 issue of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (vol. 14, no. 2), offered unprecedented visual access to Vermeer’s underpaintings, revisions, and material choices, illuminating how he constructed the quiet, light-filled effects that define his art.

The most striking outcome was the demotion of Girl with a Flute. Long regarded as an autograph Vermeer (or at least begun by him), the painting was reclassified—on the basis of differences in handling, pigment use, and overall quality—as the work of an associate of Johannes Vermeer. The announcement, made in tandem with the exhibition, came at a sensitive moment: the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was then preparing its major 2023 Vermeer retrospective and had anticipated presenting the work as a genuine Vermeer. The divergence between the two institutions’ conclusions sparked widespread discussion about evolving standards of attribution and the timing of scholarly announcements ahead of blockbuster shows.