And now you can settle in for a long, luscious look at the MIA’s famous visitor, Johannes Vermeer’s “Woman Reading a Letter,” a 17th-century treasure on loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

And in that sense, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663–64) stands as an enigmatic pinnacle. Here, a woman, dimmed by shadows, stands reading a letter, rapt by the words, which she pulls close ...

The museum plans to restore the work according to Vermeer’s original intention, which conveys that the young woman is reading a love letter. Stephan Koja, the director of the Gemäldegalerie ...