Close to Vermeer

‘The Milkmaid’ and ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ are world-famous, but what do we know about the man who made them? There are no self-portraits, no letters, no notes; a small oeuvre is all that Johannes Vermeer left behind. Over 30 paintings are attributed to him, most of which are outside the Netherlands. As the Rijksmuseum prepares for its largest ever exhibition on Vermeer, award-winning filmmaker Suzanne Raes decides to film the process and follows the curators and others involved. The result is a film about the love of painting and the anatomy of a genius.