The girl with a pearl earring, whoever she may be, is safely at home in the Netherlands. There, she's the centerpiece of the Mauritshuis collection in The Hague, although her identity is as much of a mystery as ever -- art history favored one of Vermeer's daughters, until Tracey Chevalier wrote her best-selling novel about an unconsummated romance between the artist and his maid.

But curators at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum somehow sweet-talked the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna, into loaning its finest Vermeer for a new exhibition, "Masterworks of Dutch and Flemish Painting," timed to coincide with the Japan opening of the film of "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

You'll be disappointed if you go to the Tokyo Met expecting any more canvases by the artist. Vermeer's name was plastered all over the exhibition's publicity material and "The Allegory of Painting" (1665/66) is its poster image, but it's the only work by the artist in the show.