The first exhibition at the newly renovated Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art (TMMA) was always going to be an important one. After a two-year closure to let the builders in, it wouldn't have sufficed to just have a run-of-the-mill exhibition. Something special was required, and with "Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis" the TMMA has succeeded in putting itself back on Tokyo's art map as if it had never been away.

The main attraction appears to be Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with A Pearl Earring" (1665), which is being given the same kind of treatment popular rides at Disneyland are given, namely a taped-off maze-like queue leading to the "holy of holies." And the atmosphere of devout reverence that surrounds this work could easily trick you into thinking that you were looking at a masterpiece on a par with the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But you're not.

Actually Vermeer's painting is rather small and drab, despite its Scarlett Johansson associations. With its lone figure thrust forward by a solid black background, it's not even a typical Vermeer, but something much simpler. A better example of Vermeer's trademark style — i.e. subtly painted interior scenes with female figures in the background — is available across Ueno Park at the National Museum of Western Art, where the "Young Lady With a Pearl Necklace" is on display at the "From Renaissance to Rococo" exhibition.