Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2012

The most outstanding Renaissance art came from Italy and Northern Europe, and this exhibition allows a side-by-side comparison. Touring Japan are 107 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from the National Museums of Berlin, amassed when the city was capital of the nineteenth-century Kingdom of Prussia. Viewers can contrast masterpieces like Young Lady with a Pearl Necklace, one of the finest surviving canvasses by Jan Vermeer van Delft, with works by Italian painters Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The National Museum of Western Art, Jun 13-Sep 17 (listing).