Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/1/2015)

Lanzmann opens this often harrowing study with the stark images produced by such Jewish artists as Bedrich Lederer, Ferdinand Bloch, Bedrich Fritta, Otto Ungar and Karel Fleischmann, who worked covertly at night with whatever materials they could lay their hands on and buried their pictures in the ground to prevent their discovery by the Nazi guards. Yet it is hard to recognise the living hell depicted in these hasty sketches as Lanzmann arrives at Bohusovice station and watches the trains before taking a tour of the modern Czech town of Terezin. Indeed, there is seemingly no connection between the drawings and the scenes of civilised contentment contained in Kurt Gerron's propaganda film, Terezin: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area, which was made in the summer of 1944 during a visit by the Danish Red Cross.

The clips selected show residents working in factories inside the complex and enjoying such leisure activities as playing football and listening to science lectures. But the casual shots of the showers are chilling and Lanzmann was fully aware that former Viennese rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein was part of the Jewish Council that worked with the German commanders to give this false impression to the wider world. Thus, when he and cinematographer William Lubtchansky met Murmelstein on a balcony overlooking Rome in 1975, he had several pressing questions to ask about the nature of his relationship with the Nazis and the extent to which he had been `a calculating realist' who had been little more than a `marionette that had to pull its own strings'.

Murmelstein had known Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, in Vienna before the war. He claims that he had played a key role in the destruction of Jewish property on Kristallnacht in November 1938 and had exploited the terror within the community by accepting bribes to help people leave Austria, which has been part of the Third Reich since the Anschluss of March 1938. Murmelstein reveals that he had received several offers to leave for Palestine, but had elected to stay because he felt a sense of duty to those who were in no position to escape. He concedes that he also saw his mission as something of an adventure and that he derived great satisfaction from obtaining visas to spirit his co-religionists out of a country that was fast losing its identity and sense of imperial pride.

While Murmelstein was finding travel documents for 2000 neighbours in the summer of 1939, Eichmann, who had become head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was drawing up plans for a reservation at Nisko that would enable the Nazis to experiment with the mass deportation of Jews from conquered territories as the Second World War progressed. This concept had its roots in a 1937 Polish scheme to repatriate its Jewish population to Madagascar and the Nazi hierarchy continued to work towards this mass exodus until the British captured the island in 1942.

Murmelstein was among the first batch to be transported to Nisko in October 1939 and he recalls arriving at Zarzecze in some bewilderment. He states that Eichmann played an active role in the building of the camp and counters Hannah Arendt's contention that he exhibited merely `the banality of evil', as he was a cruel, corrupt and zealous demon. According to Murmelstein, several Jews escaped into the Russian zone of occupied Poland and, before he was sent back to Vienna after 25 days, he dedicated himself to protecting those who had been too weak to toil in the camp workshops.

Having filmed memorials in the Austrian capital, Lanzmann visits the Golem and Pinkas synagogues in Prague to see the walls filled with the names of those who had perished during the war. Many would have spent time at Theresienstadt, which was hailed as a model ghetto with a degree of autonomy that was preserved by the `Judenältesten', a council of elders that was directly appointed by Eichmann. The first president was Jacob Edelstein, who was installed in December 1941 and remained in the post until January 1943, when he was replaced by his deputy, Paul Eppstein, who was succeeded by Murmelstein in September 1944.

As Lanzmann reveals, Murmelstein's predecessors were executed by their gaolers. Edelstein was charged with attempting to save Jews from deportation and was dispatched to Auschwitz, where he was forced to witness the deaths of his wife and young son before being shot. Lanzmann strolls through the ruins of the camp and claims that this place of brutality, injustice and murder suddenly feels alive and real to him. He discovers that Edelstein had been ordered by commander Siegfried Seidl and his feared lieutenant Karl Bergl to stage a mass hanging of occupants from the Aussiger barracks in order to scare people into obeying the regime. Moreover, they compelled Edelstein to find his own executioner and he managed to persuade a man called Fischer to do the deed on 8 January 1942 in return for a glass of rum and some chewing tobacco. As Lanzmann concludes, Edelstein would have been powerless to resist, especially as deportations from the camp started around the same period.

Lanzmann also pays his respects at the spot where Eppstein was killed just eight days after making a speech in which he urged his fellow inmates to remain steadfast in the hope that they would eventually emerge from the darkness. Some 20 to 30,000 Jews were still billeted at Theresienstadt and Lanzmann avers that the Germans were so afraid of an uprising that Karl Rahm and Ernst Mohs were assigned to arrest Eppstein on a trumped up charge of attempting to escape on a bicycle. Murmelstein was promoted in his place and helped cover up news of the execution until 5000 men had been sent to the death camps to quash any hint of Jewish resistance.

According to Murmelstein, the eradication of the Jews was started in earnest in January 1943 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Nazis coming to power in Germany. He recalls arriving at Theresienstadt in the same month and being grateful to Ernst Brunner (who had known him in Vienna) for giving him a Category A rank that spared him manual labour and deportation. Looking back, he accepts that he was a divisive character, as he had a brusque manner and got things done, even when they weren't always popular. Yet, he has no regrets about enforcing a delousing programme and withholding food during a typhus outbreak from those who refused vaccination.

As a result of his strict policy, the emergency was over in three weeks and Murmelstein clearly felt sufficiently emboldened to agree to help the Nazis renovate the camp in time for a visit by the Danish Red Cross. Convinced that any repairs would improve the standard of everyday life, Murmelstein also reasoned that the Germans would be more reluctant to liquidate the population if its presence had been broadcast in a propaganda film. He realised that he was doing Eichmann's bidding and regretted the fact that Eppstein agreed to the sick and disabled being moved out before the cameras came. But he affirms that he was doing his best for the majority, as he was when he agreed to the introduction of a 70-hour working week, as useful men and women were worth preserving. Murmelstein compares his efforts to those of Chaim Rumkowksi and Jacob Gens in the Lódz and Vilna ghettos and, when Lanzmann asks how he could perform such tasks without emotion, he replies that the patient will die if a surgeon weeps over the operating table.

He further compares himself to Scheherezade and a tightrope walker performing without a net, as he remembers how he dissuaded the authorities from killing new-born babies and delayed the drawing up of a convoy list in October 1944 to prolong as many lives as he could. Murmelstein concedes that he was striving to save himself by making himself invaluable, but did fear he would be executed after the Red Cross episode, as he was not averse to rubbing the Nazis the wrong way whenever he could. Yet, he remained on decent terms with Rahm, whom he had known in Vienna and who had allowed him to sit in Eichmann's presence.

When Lanzmann asks about the death camps, Murmelstein insists that nobody knew definitively of their existence, although there were rumours. He recalls the story of some children being repatriated to Britain in return for some German prisoner captured in the Middle East and how one had shouted `gas' when they were taken for a shower. However, when several members of the party fell ill, Anton Burger had them killed and sent the remainder to camps in the east. Among them was Franz Kafka's sister, Ottla. But Murmelstein swears that no one knew about the extermination camps until some Slovaks escaped in 1944 and the rumours began to circulate.

In conclusion, Murmelstein claims that while the Jews could rightly be described as martyrs not all could be called saints. He explains that many compiling deportation lists were open to bribery and suggests that the survival instinct caused people to do shameful things. But he also recognises how lucky he was to survive and later be acquitted from a Prague court on a charge of collaboration. He accepts that historian Gershom Scholem considers him a traitor who should be executed and jokes that he steers clear of Israel as a consequence. But he hopes that Lanzmann is the last danger he faces in a life that has been blessed and cursed in equal measure.

Throughout this four-hour investigation, it's never established whether Lanzmann entirely believes Murmelstein, whose occasional evasiveness makes him a somewhat unreliable witness. But it is clear that Lanzmann appreciates the risks he took in order to do a nigh on impossible job. Indeed, he seemingly comes to respect a man who was well aware of his own talents and unflinching in his assertion that he had always served his own people rather than the Nazis. But, while he claimed to have helped 120,000 Jews escape, it's difficult to overlook that Murmelstein remained a controversial figure until his death in 1989 and that his claims are still being contested.

He was obviously a natural raconteur and the closing shot of him walking with Lanzmann in the Forum somehow seems to link him with the wisdom of the ancients. However, Lanzmann's focus does not fall solely on this erudite Austrian rabbi. He is also keen to prove the extent to which Eichmann had hands-on involvement with the running of the camps and to confirm that he was much more than a bureaucrat simply following orders, as he claimed repeatedly during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961. But Lanzmann is also eager to bear witness at the very places where atrocities occurred. Consequently, he explores the remnants of Theresienstadt and contrasts the sombre mood that still pervades the barracks and administrative buildings with the attractive residences that dot the modern Czech town, which even has its own nightclub. But this personal odyssey is also designed to make viewers ponder how they might have reacted to finding themselves in the middle of a war crime that they may not necessarily have known was taking place under their noses.

At 84, Frederick Wiseman is half a decade younger than Lanzmann. But the master of Direct Cinema has been much more prolific in a career that has seen him produce 43 films in 48 years. Although none can match Shoah's 566 minutes, many have come in around four hours, including At Berkeley (2013), which went on general release towards the end of last year. Coming in at three hours, National Gallery might be considered a miniature. But this profile of a revered landmark that has stood on Trafalgar Square since 1838 is every bit as compelling as La Danse (2009) and Crazy Horse (2011), which respectively ventured behind the scenes of the Paris Opera ballet corps and French capital's leading burlesque venue. Documentaries about galleries and museums have become increasingly common since Nicolas Philibert made La Ville Louvre in 1990. Indeed, 2014 alone saw the release of tours of the Hermitage, the Vatican Museums and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, as well as the latest entries in producer Phil Grabsky's ongoing Exhibition on Screen series (more of which anon). But, for once, Wiseman is less interested in the mechanics of a great institution than in the art on display and how the curatorial and docent staff strive to make it relevant to visitors of all ages and backgrounds.

Opening with a montage of masterpieces, Wiseman fixes on a cleaner burnishing a floor with an electric polisher and captures the reflection in the shiny surface. In so doing, Wiseman announces that he is going to concentrate on ways of seeing and how the eye can be guided and the mind can be taught to look at and think about painting in new ways. To this end, he has a female guide ask a tour party to forget that they are viewing Jacopo di Cione's altarpiece in an art gallery and imagine they are 14th-century Tuscan peasants gazing at it by candlelight and feeling their faith being reinforced by the flecks of gold that would have been picked up by the flickering flames. It's a bold approach to making art come alive and the impression it leaves lingers during footage of a meeting at which National Galley Director Nicholas Penny resists the efforts of Head of Communications Jill Preston to consider an outreach initiative designed to enhance visitor appeal.

Penny's concerns about lowering standards are understandable. But one only has to witness the pleasure being experienced by a class of blind art lovers discussing Camille Pissarro's `The Boulevard Montmartre at Night' to realise that there should be no boundaries when it comes to connecting the public with the treasures entrusted to Penny's care. The case is reinforced as an enthusiastic male guide introduces a group of small children to Orazio Gentileschi's `The Finding of Moses' by reassuring them that paintings are simply trying to tell stories in the same manner as their picture books.

The guide explaining the history of Hans Holbein's portrait of Christina of Denmark takes a more sophisticated approach, but still captures the personality of a sitter who clearly didn't relish the prospect of marrying Henry VIII. A lecturer urges teachers to decode paintings and make them more relevant to their students by considering what might have been in an artist's mind when they created a particular masterwork. But this campaign of enlightenment is not solely restricted to visitors and guests, as a pair of curators debate the impact that restoration can have on understanding the meaning of a picture and how it was produced.

Heading into the galleries, Wiseman and cameraman John Davey watch aspiring amateurs sketching earnestly. But they are just as intrigued by the visitors gazing at paintings and listening to headset commentaries, as well as those dozing or kissing on the benches provided in the centre of the rooms. However, they have to eavesdrop to the Di Cione guide, as she treats her party to her interpretation of Peter Paul Rubens's `Samson and Delilah' and coaxes them into imagining what it must have felt like to betray a loved one out of patriotism. She also asks them to reflect upon the fact that the painting once hung in a burgomaster's house and that the flesh on display must have shocked some of his more prudish neighbours.

Another female docent suggests that while a painting captures a specific moment in time, it is always possible to reinterpret its precise meaning. She finds this sense of ambiguity beguiling, but those using the bank of computer screens provided for visitors seem less inspired. Amusingly, Nicholas Penny seems equally nonplussed as a committee strives to convince him to have the finishing line for a marathon outside the National Gallery in order to raise its profile. He worries that such a sporting association would cheapen the institution's reputation and frets that its charitable status might be compromised if it was seen openly supporting the sponsor of the race. Once again, Jill Preston leads the chorus trying to change his mind, but Penny feels such cheap publicity would make the gallery seem desperate.

Meanwhile, the Di Cione guide is talking a group through the symbolism in Holbein's `The Ambassadors', which some claim holds clues to a murder conspiracy. She points out the ingenuity of the anamorphic skull in the foreground and also notes the crucifix at the rear, which she suggests might be the artist's way of reminding the handsome young duo posing for him that the end can come at any time. A colleague continues on a sombre note as she informs a school party containing several black kids that a distressing number of the pictures bequeathed to the gallery were initially purchased by slave traders seeking to show off their wealth. She reminds them that paintings that seem old and musty can often have surprising connections with modern life.

Elsewhere, an audience listens to a lecture on George Stubbs's methodology and Wiseman follows this with another spot of people watching that includes a neat match shot between the hats being worn by the subject of a painting and the woman (supposedly) looking at it. The Gentileschi guide returns to tell a school group that it is more rewarding to study art than maths because it offers more ways of being right. He uses Giovanni Bellini's `The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr' to explain how authors and film-makers have a lot more time to tell their stories than painters and praises them for being able to convey the most dramatic moment of a narrative in a single image. Engaging his audience, he gets them to speculate about the reasons for the inclusion of some woodcutters looking away from the crime and uses this to urge them into always taking a second look, as you never know what you might find.

Slipping away from the public space, Wiseman sits in on a nude life class as the teacher offers suggestions about composition and the different ways in which the female flesh and the vertical pole on which she is leaning can be depicted. He then ventures into the square to film the fountains at night and contrast the bustle of nocturnal London with the quiet of an early morning as people queue in the cold to get into the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition. Once again, Wiseman and Davey capture faces in close-up and juxtapose them with the works on display inside the gallery. This time, the pictures are as celebrated as `The Virgin on the Rocks', `St Jerome in the Wilderness', `Lady With an Ermine' and `Salvator Mundi', but Wiseman notes the reverence of the onlookers and the same sense of humility in the presence of genius affects a curator discussing Leonardo's technique and humanity with a TV crew.

This use of lectures and interviews allows Wiseman to bend the rules of observational cinema while retaining his usual distance. But he comes in for a closer look as a frame restorer cleans a section prior to making new shapes in the wood. Elsewhere in the bowels of the gallery, a man toils on a canvas, while a female curator invites a male colleague to take a minute sample for analysis from a picture she has been working on. The intricacy of this task is contrasted with a man cleaning a much larger canvas and a woman mixing chemicals to apply to the surface of another smaller item.

Outside, patrons queue in the rain to see Leonardo's `The Virgin and Child With St Anne and St John the Baptist' and `The Last Supper'. But the NG management team is fully aware that such bumper paydays will be fewer and further between over the next couple of years and a meeting focuses on the need to make budget cuts to tide the gallery over this leaner spell. Clearly Wiseman timed his visit well (he spent 12 weeks in London in 2012), as the gallery was also hosting an exhibition about the debt that JMW Turner owed to Claude Lorrain and he attends a lecture on how `Dido Building Carthage' not only reflects Turner's fascination with Antiquity, but also implies his views on the recent collapse of the Bonapartist empire in France.

Repairing to a quieter corner, Wiseman catches Larry Keith explaining how the removal of yellow glaze from Rembrandt van Rijn's `Portrait of Frederick Rihel on Horseback' has revealed new information about the colour tone and depth of the image. However, he also produces an x-ray image to reveal the image of a man standing in a field that Rembrandt clearly abandoned in order to paint this equestrian work. He points out areas where well-meaning restorers from earlier ages had damaged the canvas, but concedes that no painting is immune from the ravages of time and that difficult decisions have to be taken about preserving the integrity of Old Masters, as well as their sheen.

Following brief cutaways to show the Leonardo `cartoon' being photographed and a woman painstakingly applying gold leaf to a frame, Wiseman snatches another snippet of an interview being conducted by a rival crew. The speaker declares how the show has enabled scholars to gain a better understanding of how Leonardo prepared his palette and applied his paint. But a colleague also interjects that the process of hanging the pictures has also alerted them to themes and details they had not noticed before.

After dropping in on another life class, in which the tutor remarks how good it is to remind ourselves that we are all the same when unclothed, Wiseman joins the small crowd watching some eco protesters draping a banner about saving the Arctic across the famous portico entrance in an attempt to draw attention to the NG's connection with Shell. However, work goes on uninterrupted inside, as a critic does a piece to camera about Turner's use of black in `The Fighting Temeraire' and a curator supervises a crew lighting the Master of Delft's giant Crucifixion triptych. An Australian expert continues this theme by showing a couple of students how Rubens's use of light in `Samson and Delilah' was possibly influenced by the fact that he knew the picture would be hung over a chimney with a window to the viewer's left. He also explains how light reflects off flooring and Wiseman again shoots into the polished tiles to achieve a striking effect.

A couple of young curators take this factor into account as they discuss the new layout for a gallery undergoing renovation. But Wiseman leaves them to pay brief calls on lectures about Titian's love of Ovid, Michaelangelo's `The Entombment' and Nicolas Poussin's `The Adoration of the Golden Calf', which had recently been returned to show after being vandalised by a man with an aerosol can. Another guide marvels at how a still life artist has preserved a lobster and a lemon for posterity, while a rather dull quartet debate the accuracy of the musical notation contained within Jean-Antoine Watteau's `The Scale of Love'.

Indeed, Wiseman seems to lose momentum at this juncture, as he watches a female guide discussing the emotional content of Counter Reformation art and flits between close-ups of Caravaggio's `Salomé Receives the Head of John the Baptist' and `The Supper at Emmaus' during a Beethoven recital by pianist Kausikan Rajeshkumar. Footage of a reception for the Turner show also feels a tad dry, but Larry Keith returns with a colleague and a couple of students to enliven proceedings with a discussion of Diego Velásquez's `Christ in the House of Martha and Mary'. A seemingly less extrovert expert explains the craft involved in achieving the texture of the frame surrounding Rembrandt's `Self-Portrait at the Age of 63'. Yet Wiseman seems more taken with his hesitant approach than Penny's confident assessment of Poussin's imitation of sculptural effects in `The Triumph of Pan'.

As Betsy Wieseman waxes lyrical about Johannes Vermeer's `A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal', Wiseman shifts between the canvas and her hearers. It is readily apparent that the majority are white, educated and somewhere in affluent middle age and, as Wieseman restates the idea that no two people see the same painting (and that few see the same painting on a second viewing), it seems as though NG diversification strategies still have a way to go. Larry Keith similarly pitches his discussion of Caravaggio's use of ground to build up the paint in `Boy Bitten by Lizard' towards a specialist audience and it is somewhat ironic that Penny provides a more accessible insight into the ownership history of a pair of Titian pictures of the goddess Diana.

Wiseman might have been advised to end his tour in the rooms devoted to the Impressionists, as the paintings are so iconic and the visitors are clearly excited to see them. However, he cannot resist the temptation to include two more items that feel rather tacked on. The first centres on Jo Shapcott recording a reading of her poem, `Callisto's Song', which was inspired by Titian's `Diana and Callisto', while the second features Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson in a balletic piece entitled `Machina for Metamorphosis' by choreographer Wayne McGregor. Staged between two paintings from the Titian show, this feels staged for the camera rather than happened upon, as there is no audience applause at the end. Moreover, the sight of the dancers disappearing through a doorway into darkness feels like an unsatisfactory ending to a film about an art gallery.

Notwithstanding this minor cavils, this is a typically astute and alert piece of Direct film-making, in which no people or paintings are identified by captions on the screen. Acting as his own sound recordist (with the assistance of Emmanuel Croset), Wiseman excels at picking up the ambience of the galleries, while his precise editing reinforces the aura of hushed bustle. He particularly impresses here with the cross-cuts between painted and rapt faces, some of which are as witty as they are deft. But this differs significantly from his other snapshots of institutions in action, as the operational side plays second fiddle to the artefacts and the ways in which they are cherished and showcased by the knowledgeable and dedicated staff. In some ways, therefore, this could be branded an infomercial. But Wiseman allows himself the odd sly aside that suggests the National Gallery may need to make some compromises if it is to respond to the social, cultural and financial challenges that lie ahead.

Sticking with the art theme, Exhibition on Screen returns with the latest in producer Phil Grabsky's increasingly impressive series of intimate introductions to the life and works of major artists featured in hot ticket shows at some of Europe's leading museums and galleries. Art historian Tim Marlow may be an absentee from David Bickerstaff's Girl With a Pearl Earring and Other Treasures of The Mauritshuis, but the switch from a televisual to a more cinematic style marks a considerable improvement on 2013's Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure (which Grabsky co-directed with Ben Harding), as the critical focus is sharper and the majestic, often floating camerawork gives the viewer a much better feel for the venue in which the key paintings are hanging and, thus, heightens the sensation of being in situ.

Although this is a celebration of the re-opening of The Mauritshuis in The Hague after a four-year renovation programme, the spotlight immediately falls on Johannes Vermeer's much-loved masterpiece, ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring'. Hugh Bonneville reads passages from travel writer EV Lucas's A Wanderer in Holland (1905) and Vermeer of Delft (1922), in which he claims that the picture makes the country `sacred ground' and it's clear from footage of the painting's world tour that it has achieved an iconic status that prompts narrator Nicolette McKenzie to call it `the Mona Lisa of the North'.

Yet, while the subject of `La Gioconda' is presumed to be Lisa Gherardini, nothing is known about the girl whom Lucas deemed the most beautiful thing in Holland because her lower lip was more exquisite than a Darwin tulip. Over footage of the painting being removed from its transit packaging, closely inspected and re-hung in The Mauritshuis, museum director Emilie Gordenker reveals that she was asked repeatedly on the tour what makes this picture so special. She concedes that it does no harm that the sitter has an enticing beauty, but points out the deceptive simplicity of Vermeer's composition, as the dark background projects the figure into the viewer's space, while the girl's expression invites engagement.

Independent curator Kapil Jariwala also lauds the modesty and timelessness of the design and notes that this probably says much about the relationship between the artist and his model. Painter Stephen Farthing agrees that her sexiness owes much to Vermeer's skill, as he discusses how ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring' is less physically and emotionally distant than `Mona Lisa'. But what most beguiles author Tracy Chevalier is that the painting feels unresolved, as even after writing a bestselling novel about it, she remains uncertain what the subject is thinking and whether she is happy or sad.

As the camera glides through a warren of solemnly elegant and atmospheric rooms, Bonneville reads art historian Edward Snow's account in A Study of Vermeer of meeting the gaze of the girl with the pearl earring, which appears to be full of such reproach and regret that he feels both guilt at violating her space and inadequate for lacking her vibrancy. Farthing suggests that the white specks on her mouth and on the earring give them the look of having been anointed, while the wetness of her lips adds a lustrous sensuality. Yet Jariwala is keen to note that pearls are a symbol of virtue and faithfulness and claims that this is much more a metaphorical than a representational image.

Mauritshuis curator Lea van der Vinde explains how Vermeer required a firm grasp on reality in order to create illusion with such finesse and she highlights how he managed to capture the girl's beauty and personality in spite of her lack of eyebrows and a bow to her nose. Walter Liedtke, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, reflects on Vermeer's understanding of the psychology of the voyeur and how impactful the painting must have been when it was first revealed c.1665, as its power remains undimmed 350 years on.

Yet, as McKenzie reveals, the anonymity of the model contributes significantly to her allure and Chevalier explains how she first became interested in the image. After conducting research into the artist's household, she concluded that this was no mere portrait but a window into the soul of the sitter. She reads a passage from Girl With a Pearl Earring that captures the moment that Griet the maid posed for Vermeer and how she felt flustered when a piece of yellow cloth fell loose from her headdress. However, Liedtke and senior Mauritshuis curator Quentin Buvelot concur that the girl is more likely to have been one of Vermeer's eight daughters, although Ariane van Suchtelen raises the question that the picture's delicate detail deceives viewers into thinking that this is a life study rather than a work of the imagination.

Chevalier likes the mystery and rather hopes that a document never comes to light revealing that this fabled enigma is a baker's daughter. However, as McKenzie explains, chances of this happening are slim as very little is known about Vermeer, who was only considered a minor talent until French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger wrote a series of articles on him in the mid-19th century. Indeed, `Girl With a Pearl Earring' was scarcely known, as it had been in a private collection for a prolonged period and was in a pretty poor condition when Victor de Stuers and Arnoldus Andries des Tombe joined forces to purchase the painting when it was auctioned in 1881. The former's grandson, Peter Gatacre, reveals that the winning bid was just two guilders and 30 cents and shows the sketches that De Stuers made in his notebooks during the pursuit.

However, chief conservationist Petria Noble describes how the image only came into its own after it was restored at The Mauritshuis in 1960 and again in the 1990s. Using magnifiers and x-rays, she points out losses scattered around the canvas and areas where the natural resin varnish had become discoloured. She also discusses the instability of paint and the extent to which layers can expand and contract over time. Most intriguingly, Noble explains how the white dot on the lip had been covered during an earlier touch-up and how an additional highlight on the earring had turned out to be an upturned flake of paint.

She is pleased to be able to bring the picture closer to Vermeer's intentions. But McKenzie construes that it will never be possible entirely to understand his artistic vision as his life and mind are so shrouded in mystery. Born in Delft in 1632, Vermeer was the son of a silk merchant who also ran an inn and dealt in art. When he was 21, Johannes sought to marry Catharina Bolenes and had to convert to Catholicism in order to please her mother, Maria Thins. The couple shared her house at Oude Langendijk and had 15 children, 11 of whom survived into adulthood.

McKenzie jokes that it's remarkable that Vermeer found the time to paint at all, let alone to such a high standard. But Farthing waxes lyrical about the fact that, whereas it is possible to follow Rembrandt van Rijn's brushstrokes, Vermeer's technique is almost invisible. Liedtke agrees that he must have possessed great intelligence and a willingness to experiment, as his use of white highlights and the harmonising of the yellows, blues and reds in `Girl With a Pearl Earring' creates such an illusion of reality that it almost appears as though he had used some sort of camera apparatus.

However, McKenzie reiterates that the lack of primary sources means it's impossible to know how Vermeer developed his craft, even though it can be presumed that Rembrandt was a considerable influence. More biographical information was provided in Vermeer and Music, but it is revealed here that Johannes was a respected member of the Guild of St Luke who sold art, as well as producing it. However, he was not prolific and his known output numbers around 36 pictures. Liedtke suggests that about half of these were bought by a single patron for about 600 guilders a piece, which was the equivalent to a skilled cabinet maker's annual salary. But not everyone was convinced of Vermeer's talent, with French traveller Balthazar Moncony recording after a visit to his studio that he would not have paid 60 guilders for a painting owned by the local baker.

As Bickerstaff neatly melds a shot of the city today with Vermeer's exceptional `View of Delft' (c.1661), Bonneville reads the moment from Marcel Proust's À la Recherche du temps perdu (1913) in which Bergotte is so overwhelmed by the `little patch of yellow wall' that he keels over and dies in front of the painting. Evocatively accompanied by Asa Bennett and Dimitri Tchamouroff's score, this touching testament to Vermeer's genius prompts Liedtke to explain that the image was not captured in a single sitting, but was the product of artistic decisions taken over many months to idealise the scene and guide the viewer's eye. He notes the clouds that may have been inspired by the works of Jacob Van Ruisdael to enhance the depth of the picture, while Buvelot points out how areas of light and colour are employed to convey the wetness of the scene. He also reveals that Delft had been rocked by a gunpowder explosion in 1654 that had claimed the life of Carel Fabritius shortly after he had painted `The Goldfinch'. Yet, there is no evidence of lingering damage in Vermeer's peaceful vista and Buvelot speculates that `Girl With a Pearl Earring' is an equally romanticised version of the truth.

Following a poignant passage from EV Lucas about the changes that the world had undergone since `this sweet face was set upon canvas', McKenzie laments the fact that Vermeer sank into debt as commissions dried up during the Dutch War and a shot of his gravestone accompanies the revelation that he died in 1675 at the age of 43. She goes on to explain how he had flourished during a period that had seen the United Provinces become a major trading power and acquire a large global empire.

Remarkably, five million paintings were commissioned during this 75-year golden age, which occurred so shortly after the United Provinces secured their independence from Spain. The speed, therefore, with which the burghers ruled by the House of Orange created a mercantile marine and established global trading links through ventures like the Dutch East India Company is quite unprecedented and it seems clear that the confidence this meteoric ascent generated is reflected in contemporary artefacts. It should also be noted that, while the tolerant Protestant Dutch strove to avoid religious and diplomatic conflict, the rest of the continent was enmired in the Thirty Years' War and it was only when Louis XIV's invasion sparked the Dutch War (1672-78) that the age of affluence began to wane.

The boom years, however, enabled Johan Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Siegen to commission his Mauritshuis next to the Binnenhof parliament building in 1633. Architects Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post supervised the project between 1636-41, while John Maurice was serving as governor of Dutch Brazil and he returned to fill the property with the collection he had amassed on his travels. On his death in 1679, the house passed to the Maes family, who leased it to the Dutch government. A fire gutted much of the interior in 1704 and it was restored in period style over the ensuing decade. In 1820, the state bought The Mauritshuis to house the Royal Cabinet of Paintings and Curiosities and it officially became a museum two years later. Although small in size, it is fondly known as the `Little Jewel Box', as it contains around 800 pictures, many of which once belonged to William IV and his son, William V.

Dating from 1400 to 1750, the collection includes some of the finest examples of Flemish and Dutch painting. Buvelot particularly commends the Gallery of Prince William V, which is situated around the corner from The Mauritshuis and whose walls are splendidly crammed with pictures in the overwhelming floor to ceiling style that was common in the 19th century. He explains that equal emphasis was placed on quantity and quality, as the sheer size of the collection conveyed the status of the owner. However, Gordenker is quick to stress that The Mauritshuis is a little more discerning in its presentation and is proud of the gallery's Golden Age expertise. She takes particular pleasure in `The Garden of Eden' (1615), which was an Antwerp collaboration between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel, in which the latter painted the landscape and the background animals and the former contributed Adam and Eve and the serpent.

But religious and mythological art soon began to decline in the largely Protestant republic and Dutch painters began devising new genres to reflect a changing society. Ironically, one new form centred on church interiors. But, as merchants brought back rare animals, colourful costumes and exotic foodstuffs and spices, they wanted them incorporated into the pictures they commissioned. Whereas traditional Netherlandish items like Rogier van der Weyden's `The Lamentation of Christ' (1460-63) presented biblical scenes for devotional purposes, the burghers wanted something decorative for their homes, with some preferring sunny Italianate landscapes to drearier domestic scenes. The new middle class also delighted in seeing everyday life depicted on canvas and Gordenker notes how a nobleman, a fisherman and a woman without any underwear are all shown enjoying themselves as they skate in Hendrick Avercamp's `On the Ice' (c.1610).

According to Buvelot, Dutch art was unique in this period for the number of portraits featuring ordinary people dressed in their finery and Bonneville reads an extract from The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667 that dwells on the fact that butchers, bakers, blacksmiths and cobblers had paintings on display in their homes and workplaces. McKenzie warms to this theme in discussing the largest painting in the Mauritshuis, Paulus Potter's `The Bull' (c.1647). The museum's head of collections, Edwin Buijen, explains that, in spite of the inclusion of a large cow pat in the field, this is another idealised image, as Potter combined details from different studies to produce a composite bullock that improved on reality. Ariane van Suchtlen echoes this by pointing out how still life bouquets often contained flowers from different seasons, as photographic authenticity mattered less than the celebration of colour, texture and technique that pleased both the eye and the soul.

Like many of his contemporaries, Vermeer specialised in immersive pictures that told a story and drew the viewer into its world. However, Liedtke reveals that his mastery of intrigue and mystery was frequently employed in the production of pictures known as `tronies', a term derived from a defunct Dutch word that refers to the individuality and anonymity of a likeness. Buvelot claims that Rembrandt did much to popularise this style and suggests that when he painted girls, soldiers and old women, he was often creating types not portraits. On occasions, he took strangers from the street and was not above dressing in costumes himself to paint mirror tronies.

Selecting Anthony Van Dyck's `Portrait of Anna Wake' (1628), Gordenker explains how contemporary viewers would have known immediately that this was a real person wearing the latest fashions. But they would also have known that `Girl With a Pearl Earring' was a fantasy and Liedtke concurs because the turban is too exotic, while the pearl is too big to be anything other than a glass imitation from Venice. Nevertheless, this `tronie à la turque' loses none of its potency from not being a genuine portrait.

McKenzie declares that tronies were often painted for the open market and afforded artists the opportunity to be more daring in their choice of subject matter and more experimental in terms of technique. Van Suchtlen cites Frans Hals as a tronie specialist and commends the free brushwork in `Laughing Boy' (c.1625), while Buijen contrasts its levity with the flattering, but sombre formalism of Hals's portraits of Pieter Jacobsz Olycan and his wife Maritge Claesdr Voogt (c.1639). However, the couple would still have been delighted with the dignity of their bearing and the affirmation of affluence implied by their dress. More importantly, they would have relished the fact that they were so readily recognisable, as a portrait was something of a social statement.

Ever since the days of the Germans Hans Memling (1430-94) and Hans Holbein (1497-1543), portraiture had carried a distinctive status. However, as Buvelot explains, pictures like Memling's `Portrait of a Man at Prayer Before a Landscape' (c.1480) had been produced for private consumption rather than public display. But, during the Dutch Golden Age, portraits were meant to be seen and introduced a new form of aspirational art. Although portraiture had also flourished in Renaissance Italty, Dutch artists helped it evolve and McKenzie explains how Rembrandt's `The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp' (1632) succeeded in capturing a moment in time, as well as the likeness of the physician and his students. Coming from the Guild of Surgeons, this was a significant commission for the 25 year-old and Buijen points out how Rembrandt's desire to be a history painter is evident in the way he narrativises the scene and Bonneville reads from Nina Siegal's 2014 novel, The Anatomy Lesson, to reveal how the artist utilised a pyramidal structure to lead the eye from one pertinent detail in the unfolding drama to the next.

As with Chevalier before her, Siegal had to interpolate a good deal in order to recreate a plausible milieu and she deduces that Rembrandt must have been an extraordinarily erudite man whose pictures were all the more remarkable for the fact that he never left his native soil and acquired more knowledge from books than first-hand experience. Both authors relied heavily on academic tomes while conducting their research and Chevalier shows the camera a notebook she kept during the process. She reads a passage describing Griet's first encounter with Vermeer and compares the scene to the effect the painting has on her when she stands opposite it, as she feels so alive at being in the presence of something that Vermeer had actually touched.

As preparations continue apace for the grand re-opening, Van der Vinde examines more organised chaos in Jan Steen's depiction of a rowdy baptism party, `As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young' (c.1640). She alludes to `the household of Jan Steen' as a Dutch idiom for mayhem, as she points out the old man offering a child a puff of his pipe and the fact that the man wearing the paternity cap seems much too old to have just become a father. Buijen remarks that this is a picture that was designed to entertain, as its quotidian reality was leavened by symbolism that alert viewers would immediately have recognised.

Although he could produce more restrained pieces like `The Oyster Eater' (1658-60), Steen was renowned for his broad humour and the tendency of his subjects to overact. Van der Vinde compares him to a theatre or film director who likes to tease his audiences and Buvelot sees a similar impishness at work in Frans van Mieris's `A Brothel Scene' (1658), which is so riven with innuendo that even a pair of dogs in the shadows appear to be as amorous as the prostitute and her client in the foreground.

If realism could often be slyly subverted by wit, it could also be enhanced by fantasy. Positioned either side of `Girl With a Pearl Earring' are two paintings by Gerard ter Borch, which recall Vermeer's own fondness for presenting solitary females performing simple tasks. According to Buijen, `Woman Writing a Letter' (1655) is a story picture, as there is a bed in the darkened background, while the note paper has been folded, which suggests that the subject could be thinking better of something she has already written or could be composing a reply on the missive she had received.

One is left to wonder what the visitors are thinking as they flood into the re-opened Mauritshuis. Many head straight for the Vermeers and Liedtke ruminates upon the contradictions in his style, as he ponders whether he ever travelled outside the Dutch Republic or even met Rembrandt in Amsterdam. He concludes that Vermeer probably knew Carel Fabritius, who was Rembrandt's most brilliant pupil, as at least two of his paintings were listed in Vermeer's inventory. As Liedtke hopes that he got to see `The Goldfinch', Bonneville reads the section from Donna Tartt's eponymous 2013 novel in which Theo Decker first sets eyes on the picture with his mother. Liedtke compares the posture of the central figure and the use of background light and shade with that in `Girl With a Pearl Earring' and posits that this small canvas probably provides a key link between Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Over shots of items on sale in the gift shop, Farthing considers whether fame changes the way the public responds to a picture. He avers that people tend to identify with the image rather the actual painting, but Liedtke agrees that familiarity can never diminish the emotional power of an artwork like `Girl With a Pearl Earring', which Vermeer intended to be as haunting and memorable as the glamorised image of a starlet on the silver screen. His brilliance lies in the fact that the centuries have only increased her magnetism and the documentary ends with Bonneville quoting Lucas's admiration for a picture of such ease and grace that it almost feels as though the subject had been waiting behind the canvas in order to emerge at the touch of a brush.

Intelligently scripted by Bickerstaff, Grabsky and Jerome Vincent and full of shrewd but never showy judgements, this is a fascinating tour of a sublime building and its priceless contents. Given that the re-opening of The Mauritshuis is the principal excuse for the project, it seems a shame that more time is not devoted to the restoration and a greater emphasis is not placed on the excitement the staff felt at taking receipt of masterpieces that had been on extended loans.

Nevertheless, Bickerstaff ably captures the ambience of the viewing rooms and his gliding camerawork is often mesmerising. He also photographs the paintings with great sensitivity and insight, whether he is showing how they are hung or is focusing on details like the thickness of the paint, the direction of a brushstroke or the impact that a tiny white spot can have on an already ravishing image. But what is perhaps most impressive (and which sets this apart from earlier entries in the series) is the way in which Bickerstaff uses `Girl With a Pearl Earring' to initiate discussions about Vermeer's life and times and the themes explored and the techniques employed by his contemporaries during one of the most productive, distinctive and most cherished eras in art history.