During the global pandemic year of 2020, I availed myself of the opportunity to be “Alone with Vermeer” and see his “Gezicht op Delft” at the Mauritshuis art museum in Den Haag. I prepared myself by reading Brian Howell’s “The Dance of Geometry.“

One consequence of the COVID-19 appointment-only policy of the museum was that there were not many people in the museum.

The scarcity of people wandering the building even permitted me to be completely alone in the room with Vermeer’s “Meisje met de Parel” for an extended period of time.