A FILM inspired by one of the world’s most popular masterpieces is being shown in Bradford.

Called Exhibition on Screen’s Girl with a Pearl Earring – and Other Treasures from the Mauritshuis, the film offers audiences a private view of the world-renowned museum in The Hague. Going behind the scenes of its famous collection, it aims to discover the secrets behind Johannes Vermeer’s infamous Girl with a Pearl Earring portrait, in the year it turns 350. It seeks to answer the questions that have haunted art lovers for decades: Who was the girl? Why is it so popular? Why and how was it painted? Many of the clues that the film finds lie in other masterpieces housed in the collection.

On Tuesday, January 13 the award-winning Exhibition on Screen will give audiences in cinemas worldwide – including Cineworld and the National Media Museum in Bradford – an insight into the intriguing portrait.

Johannes Vermeer is one of the great Dutch masters and his Girl with A Pearl Earring from 1665 is one of the most enduring paintings in the history of art.

He was the master of light, a talent that is beautifully depicted in Girl with a Pearl Earring in the softness of the girl’s face, the glimmers of light that touch her lips and the shining pearl.

On a recent world tour more than a million visitors came to see the most iconic of Vermeer’s works in Tokyo.

Interest in the portrait was heightened by Tracy Chevalier’s novel Girl with a Pearl Earring and the subsequent 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.

Exhibition on Screen is produced by award-winning arts documentary maker Phil Grabsky and Seventh Art Productions. “At first glance, so little seems to be known about her. But, like detectives, we followed the clues and came to some startling conclusions,” says Phil.

For more about the screenings visit exhibitiononscreen.com