Book description
In one painting, a Dutch military officer leans toward a laughing girl.
In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third,
fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. The officer's
dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from
Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Beaver pelts, in turn,
financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to China. There -
with silver mined in Peru - Europeans would purchase, by the thousands,
the porcelain so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time. Vermeer's
haunting images hint at the stories behind these exquisitely rendered
moments. As Timothy Brook shows us in Vermeer's Hat, these pictures,
which seem so intimate, actually open doors onto a rapidly expanding
world. In one painting, a Dutch military officer leans toward a
laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver.
In a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet.
The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European
explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Beaver
pelts, in turn, financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to
China. There - with silver mined in Peru - Europeans would purchase, by
the thousands, the porcelain so often shown in Dutch paintings of this
time. Vermeer's haunting images hint at the stories behind these
exquisitely rendered moments. As Timothy Brook shows us in Vermeer's
Hat, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually open doors onto a
rapidly expanding world.
