The Girl with a Pearl Earring is back on her familiar hook at the Mauritshuis, safe after a trip to Osaka in Japan.
The return is the subject of the latest column by Sjaak Bral, the cabaret performer and born-and-bred Hagenees who writes every day about what he notices in the city.
He notes that the painting divides opinion, because for some she is the high point of Dutch painting while for others she is a 400-year-old paint stain.
Bral says he is still undecided himself, and he has used that second description as the title of the column.
His columns now come as an audio version as well as in writing, and he reads them out himself in Haags.
The episode about the painting runs two minutes and 39 seconds and appeared on Tuesday 6 October 2026.
