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Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World | 
 enlarge | Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 31105
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596914440
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.6
EAN: 9781596914445
ASIN: 1596914440
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
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Product Description
In the hands of an award-winning historian, Vermeer’s dazzling paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought—from Delft to Beijing—were transformed in the seventeenth century, when the world first became global. A painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. Vermeer’s images captivate us with their beauty and mystery: What stories lie behind these stunningly rendered moments? As Timothy Brook shows us, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually offer a remarkable view of a rapidly expanding world. The officer’s dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Those 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 porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time. Moving outward from Vermeer’s studio, Brook traces the web of trade that was spreading across the globe. The wharves of Holland, wrote a French visitor, were “an inventory of the possible.” Vermeer’s Hat shows just how rich this inventory was, and how the urge to acquire the goods of distant lands was refashioning the world more powerfully than we have yet understood.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Original May 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Vermeer's Hat is a wonderfully creative book that delves into the broader picture of global trade in the seventeenth century through Johannes Vermeer's paintings. I had some introduction to Vermeer in art appreciation classes, but Brook effectively uses the objects seen in some of his well known paintings to enlighten us about the goings and comings in a world being transformed by trade. Even the effects of climate change figure into his painting of the city of Delft, as revealed by the fishing vessels seen. From the Turkish rugs, Chinese porcelain, and silver seen in some of Vermeer's work, we begin to see the evidence of the effects of global trade with other countries, most notably China, as the author gives great attention to.
Brook uses the city of Delft, Vermeer's residence, as a starting point for understanding global trade at that time. Through the paintings of that art master we see the signs of a world that stretched far beyond Vermeer's native soil. We learn of The Dutch East India Company's role in the local economy and the transporting of thousands of Holland's citizens to far off lands in their efforts to make a better living for themselves and to bring back goods that were in demand in their native land.
The stories of shipwreck survivors and victims, Jesuit missionaries in China, the tobacco craze, silver currency extracted from South America bound for China and or Europe, Chinese culture and customs and their own outlook on the rest of the world, all come into focus in this book. Some of the stories are horrific and brutal. The competition between European powers for the Asian market also figures into this story.
Brook is to be commended for offering a fairly unique way of looking at the bigger picture (no pun intended) through the window of Johannes Vermeer's paintings.
Really surprised me with its excellence April 13, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Every once in a while, a book comes along that really surprises me with its excellence - Vermeer's Hat is one of those books. What this book is is a look into the seventeenth century, but as a hook, the book uses eight seventeenth century works of art, that each tells us something about the era in which it was created. And, what makes the book so very interesting is that it covers events and phenomenon that are rarely discussed in other books, such the movement of goods between Europe, Spanish America and China, the spread of tobacco, and so much more.
Overall, I found this book to be very entertaining and very interesting - it kept me up reading when I should have been asleep! If you are interested in the seventeenth century, then you will find this to be a very good resource. Heck, even if you are just interested in history, you will find this to be an excellent read, one that will well reward the time you spent reading it. I give this book my highest recommendations!
No Man Is An Island February 28, 2008
Much more of a book on the economics and cultural impacts of global commercial trade as it developed in the 17th century, than one on the great artist Vermeer.
It contains highly interesting and instructive stories focused on items common to the Dutch experience of Vermeer's day, such as tobacco, silver, and beaver pelts (for hats). Current day trade protectionists should read this intelligent effort by the scholar, Timothy Brook, and reflect.
The World Through A Painter's Eye February 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Timothy Brook examines some of Vermeer's most well known paintings and discovers the complicated world of the seventeenth century can be reached and revived through them. I have admired Vermeer's paintings for many years, but I never realized how much they reflect the world at the time. Even the simplest objects which to the untrained eye look just randomly placed to frame the main subject of a painting turn out to have a deep meaning. A beaver hat and a porcelain bowl remind us of the world wide trade network, the confident smile on a pretty girl's face demonstrates the rise in European women's status, a map on a wall indicates new political and military power, and so on. This is an excellent work of history, and a reminder of why historians should take even the unlikeliest of objects into account.
As interesting as Jonathan Spence and Simon Schama January 19, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
A fascinating, erudite but easy-to-read series of chapters on trade, exploration, cross-cultural influence and physical culture, using 17th century Delft as the starting point. but reaching around the globe to Asia and the Americas. I'm a huge Vermeer fan and I visited Delft last April, so the book had an added resonance to me. Although you don't need to be an art lover to appreciate the book, a familiarity with Vermeer makes the argument event more interesting. I visited the Frick Collection yesterday and saw the image on the cover for the 20th time and noticed things I'd never realized before. The book brings to mind Jonathan Spence's "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" and the Simon Schama's "The Embarassment of Riches," (both authors blurbed this book) although it's probably an easier read than either. If you like books like those and "Longitude," you'll love this. Not so much an art history book -- and not a replacement for the other books on Vermeer as an artist -- but a cultural historian's look at an important era in the opening up of the world.
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