Johannes Vermeer’s output was so scant that for the past 350 years it’s been almost impossible to exhibit his work at any scale: each of his 37 known paintings was thought to be too valuable, too fragile – and, ever since The Concert was stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, too jealously guarded by its owners – to travel much.

Instead, the Dutch baroque master’s exhibitions tend to be padded with work by other artists. This results in shows that Taco Dibbits, general director of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, calls “Vermeer ands”: “Vermeer and the Delft School, Vermeer and letter writing.”

Bloomberg Businessweek