One of only 36 known Johannes Vermeer paintings, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,†circa 1665, epitomizes the quiet grace and virtuoso technique of the enigmatic painter, particularly in its rendering of light on the side of the young woman’s face. Close examination of the 18-by-15-inch canvas reveals how Vermeer used tiny brushstrokes to capture reflections on the pearl, and broader, more expressive painting to render her ultramarine and yellow turban. Small and enduringly captivating, this image is understandably an icon of world art.

Housed in a magnificent Seventeenth Century Dutch palace in The Hague, the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis is home to some of the world’s most admired paintings †including Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” †and has become an important destination for art lovers from around the world. For more than a century, “Girl” has been hanging on the walls of the museum alongside paintings by Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen and other major masters from the Dutch Golden Age.

Vermeer’s masterwork, which dates to around 1665, has been popular for centuries, but was raised to global superstardom in 1999, when it was the subject of a best-selling novel by Tracy Chevalier and further in 2003 in a movie. With the Mauritshuis closed for renovation and expansion, the wide-eyed girl looking over her shoulder and other museum masterpieces are beginning an American tour.

“Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis,” comprising 35 paintings from the collection, is on view at the de Young Museum of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco through June 2, before traveling to Atlanta and New York City. As de Young curator Lynn Federle Orr observes, the selections reflect “the distinctive character of Dutch Seventeenth Century painting, [which was] the result of&⁵nique historical, regional and societal circumstances.”

This exciting sampling offers a splendid overview of Dutch art of the era, from perceptive portraits to sunlit landscapes, from biblical characters to meticulous still lifes, and from calm interiors to humorous genre scenes. The museum’s core holdings were acquired by Stadholder William V. Prince of Orange-Nassau (1748‱806), whose son, King William (1771‱843) presented them to the Dutch nation in 1816. Since then, the Mauritshuis collection has grown from nearly 300 to about 800 paintings.

Master storyteller Jan Steen painted highly popular pictures filled with sly, vivid commentary, conveying a sense of energy and activity through color and composition. In “As the Old Sing, So Twitter the Young,†circa 1668‱670, three generations of a family celebrate the baptism of a child (center, on his mother’s lap), as the grandfather wearing a “new father’s hat†looks on to the left and others set bad examples by drinking and smoking, notably, on the right, the father (a broadly grinning Steen himself) teaching his son to smoke a pipe.

In the Seventeenth Century, having broken away from Spain after decades of war, Holland was neither Catholic nor royalist. In the resulting conservative, middle-class, Protestant democracy Dutch artists no longer received church commissions †religious art was actually frowned upon †nor was there the important patronage of a court aristocracy.

As a result, Dutch painters turned from religious themes to an art primarily concerned with the everyday world. Replacing art of elegance and spirituality with expressions of middle-class seriousness, Dutch artists sought to convert the commonplace into something more significant, as epitomized by the work of Vermeer. As Netherlands ambassador to the United States Rudolf Bekink observes, “Few have illustrated life as skillfully as the Dutch masters of the Golden Age.”

Increasingly dependent on patronage of a merchant class that lacked refined culture and taste, Dutch painters needed to produce what these new customers demanded †pictures that were clearly defined, richly colored and to some extent glorified wealthy burghers, their families and their material possessions.

Little is known about Vermeer (1632‱675), who rarely left his hometown of Delft, fathered 15 children and died deeply in debt at age 42. In many ways he best reflected the worldly side of Seventeenth Century Dutch life, with its love of fine furniture, attractive women and lavish clothing.

Vermeer started out painting religious subjects and later city vistas, but preferred calm genre scenes, notable for their virtuoso treatment of light. The atmospheric quality of his paintings †the rich warm ambience and finely nuanced color harmonies that suffuse his interior scenes, the dignity and self-confidence of his characters and the superb balance of his compositions †make for glorious works with enduring appeal. Whether depicting a milkmaid or lacemaker at work, a female burgher receiving a love letter, or a painter and model in a studio, his 36 known paintings exude calm and timelessness.

Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt’s most gifted student, utilized fluent brushwork to create arguably the most famous bird in Dutch art history, “The Goldfinch,†in 1654. The nearly life-size depiction was likely conceived as a trompe l’oeil work; it measures 13¼ by 9 inches.

Although she reveals nothing of her character, the young girl’s gaze in “Girl with a Pearl Earring” continues to enthrall viewers. The dewy brilliance of her eyes and slightly opened mouth and her pristine skin give her an immediate, animated presence. Her iridescent earring and light blue and yellow turban emerge dramatically from the black background.

Today, “the Dutch Mona Lisa” is one of the most famous pictures in the world, but little is known about the subject or how she came to be painted. Hypotheses, legends and speculation abound, adding to her global popularity. It is a real treat for Americans to see her in person.

Holland’s global economy, flourishing during an era when the Dutch Republic dominated world seaways and European commerce, “resulted in a staggering level of wealth flowing into the country,” notes Orr, and stimulated an unprecedented market for portraiture. “Successful individuals, married couples and members of the stadtholder’s court in The Hague [along with civic groups and leaders of charitable institutions] wanted likenesses to pass on to posterity,” she notes.

Rather than the staged formality of past likenesses, Dutch portraiture, which “perhaps reached its most perfect form in the Golden Age,” observes Orr, emphasized perceptive views of subjects. Hals (1582/83‱666), she points out, “focuses selectively and only on details that convey meaning, capturing a psychological stance that suggests the positive outlook of Dutch society at large.” Portraits of a fashionably dressed, newly wed husband and wife on view, with crisply painted details such as their striking pleated cuffs and satin clothing, reflect the “easy confidence of Hals’ sitters,” says Orr.

Of special interest to visitors will be three portraits by Rembrandt (1606‱690), whose likenesses focusing on essentials of character and emanating a kind of spiritual radiance mark him as the greatest of all Dutch painters. They range from a studio copy of a self-portrait at age 19 to “Portrait of an Elderly Man,” painted 40 years later.

One of the great Dutch still life painters, Willem Heda specialized in carefully staged compositions featuring a few pieces displayed on tabletops, painted with a subdued palette of grays and silvers. In “Still Life with a Roemer and Watch,†1629, objects are arrayed to enable the artist to show off his ability to depict the play of light on varied surfaces, while the timepiece at the left refers to the transience of life.

The former, executed by a student after the master’s original, shows the artist in deep shadow that heightens interest in the features shown in reflected light, suggesting insights into the young man who would become a titan of world art. The latter, depicting an ordinary man, presents him with rumpled casualness in contrast to the idealized formality of traditional portraiture, offering a likeness familiar to the burgeoning Dutch middle class.

Some Dutch artists visiting Rome, a hotbed of artistic innovation early in the Seventeenth Century, returned home influenced by the theatrical style of Caravaggio, whose varied work emphasized dramatic staging, bold chiaroscuro lighting effects and heightened realism of forms. One of the most successful, Utrecht’s Gerrit von Honthorst, caused a stir with Caravaggesque religious scenes and expressive portraits like “The Violinist.”

There was great interest in genre paintings that mirrored actual everyday life in the Netherlands, whether portraying informal musical performances, simple domestic activities or on occasion bawdy tavern scenes.

Reflecting societal emphasis on modesty, domestic scenes depicting routine activities in spotless, well-ordered households, such as “The Old Lacemaker” by Nicholas Maes, were in great demand. Pieter De Hooch (1629‱684) offered a glimpse of interactions in a sunlit courtyard between a pipe-smoking gentleman and a beer-drinking maid in “A Man Smoking and a Woman Drinking.”

Other painters, such as Adriaen van Ostade, specialized in lively renderings of peasant life, as in “The Violinist,” or dandies of the newly wealthy middle class.

The first Dutch painter to specialize in the peasant genre, Adriaen Van Ostade created cheerful, rustic pictures with telling details, such as “The Violinist,†1673. Here, an old woman leans on an inn door, joined by assorted local types, to enjoy music played by an itinerant musician.

Master of humorous, often dissolute, scenes of everyday life, Jan Steen (1626‱679) delineated people, clothing, furnishings and space in great detail, whether showing a coy young woman offering an oyster †considered an aphrodisiac †or a raucous family group making merry and engaging in boorish habits over food and wine. Exquisitely painted and filled with bad behavior, good humor and suggestive narratives, Steen’s works continue to delight.

Dutch emphasis on the domestic sphere extended to objects found in the home, whether floral displays or inanimate objects, which became pictorial subjects in their own right. Still life painters excelled at rendering objects with the respect and accuracy of portraitists, as documented by appealing canvases ranging from depictions of tabletops with the proverbial groaning board of food and drink to closeups of fruit to gorgeous bouquets of colorful flowers.

Carel Fabritius (1622‱654) apparently painted the life-size “The Goldfinch” as a trompe l’oeil, an illusionistic work to “deceive the eye.” Recent conservation has restored the highlights to this intriguing picture. It is fascinating to behold.

The Mauritshuis examples demonstrate the accuracy of Orr’s observation that “Although frequently characterized as simple imitation&‬ the still-life genre requires of the artist heightened powers of observation, delicacy of technique and sophistication of staging to achieve a convincing verisimilitude.”

Having fought so long to achieve independence, the Dutch took extraordinary pride in their home terrain. Landscape painters worked hard to capture the fog and moist atmosphere of their flat and seemingly featureless terrain, in keeping with the growing recognition that nature itself was a subject worthy of artistic exploration. “Superb artists specialized in portraying the Dutch homeland in all its characteristic details,” observes Orr, “creating the most significant body of landscape paintings in the European tradition.”

Dutch pride in the commercial successes and technological achievements that enhanced their thriving economy †including massive engineering projects that enabled the country to reclaim large land areas from the sea †was also reflected in Seventeenth Century landscapes.

The leading landscape painter of the Golden Age, Jacob van Ruisdael turned sketches made on the dunes outside his hometown into panoramic studio paintings, like “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields,†circa 1670‷5. In addition to the white linen bleaching in the foreground †an important industry at the time †van Ruisdael offered an interpretation of the city’s skyline under impressive cloud formations.

Landscapes by van Ruysdael (1628?‱682) not only described the countryside but included views of ships designed to navigate the country’s shallow canals or bleaching grounds and windmills that contributed to local economies. His student Meindert Hobbema (1638‱709) tended to focus on cottages, water mills and groups of trees, but enlivened beautifully painted works like “Wooded Landscape with Cottages” with hunters on horseback accompanied by a pack of hounds, children playing by a pond and sunlit, distant views.

Jan Van Goyen (1596‱656), another leading landscapist, depicted both the Dutch countryside and views based on travels to places like Germany. His “View of the Rhine near Hochelten” highlights landmarks of the town, to which he added thriving commercial activity along the foreground river.

With the highest standard of living in Europe and unprecedented population growth, Holland experienced a building boom, primarily in its cities. Skilled specialists produced exquisitely detailed cityscapes †with hushed streets, tree-lined canals and green public spaces †and architectural paintings offering detailed views of buildings and streetscapes.

This beautiful and rewarding glimpse into the Golden Age of Dutch painting reflects the economic, technological, political and cultural accomplishments of an extraordinary society. As de Young curator Orr puts it, “The brilliant flowering of the Dutch school exemplified in these paintings was a unique achievement, and the works continue to intrigue and delight to this day.”

After closing in San Francisco, the exhibition travels to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, June 22⁓eptember 29. Ten paintings will be at the Frick Collection in New York City, October 22⁊anuary 19.

The 145-page, illustrated catalog contains insightful essays by Orr and Mauritshuis experts that explore the artwork and the history of Dutch painting. It sells for $34.95.

The de Young Museum, part of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, is in Golden Gate Park at 501 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive.

For more information, www.deyoungmuseum.org or 415-750-3600.