Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring has gone back on display at the Netherlands’ Mauritshuis museum, a day after climate activists targeted the 17th-century masterpiece.
“We are incredibly grateful that The Girl remained undamaged and is back in her familiar place so quickly,” the museum’s director, Martine Gosselink, said in a statement.
A video posted on Thursday on Twitter showed a man pouring a red substance from a can over another protester who appeared to attempt to glue his head to the glass-protected painting.
🤍The Girl is back in the museum! To be admired (not to be touched)
Want to know everything about Vermeer's masterpiece? Check out our online story (link in bio) and listen to a writer, fashion activist & our curator.
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665 pic.twitter.com/8lYAC1WKQ9— Mauritshuis (@mauritshuis) October 28, 2022
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The second man stuck his hand to the panel holding the painting.
The painting was removed from the wall and thoroughly checked in the museum’s conservation studio.
It went back on the wall on Friday afternoon.
Police arrested three people for “public violence against property”. Their identities were not released, in line with Dutch privacy rules.
Earlier this month, climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum.
Other protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery.
In both cases, the paintings were undamaged.
