Vermeer's Hat The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

by Brook, Timothy

• ISBN13: 9781596914445
• ISBN10: 1596914440
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-26
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Summary

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 Hatshows 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. Timothy Brookcompleted this book while a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. He holds the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford University and is the author of many books, including the award-winningConfusions of Pleasure. 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. The beauty and mystery of Vermeer's images are captivating. What stories lie behind these moments rendered on canvas? Timothy Brook shows that 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 Hatshows 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. "For those who think they have mastered all the ins and outs of the seventeenth century Netherlands and particularly the country portrayed by the marvelously stay-at-home Dutch painters, Timothy Brook's fine book provides a shock. By way of Vermeer's pictures, he takes us through doorways into a suddenly wider universe, in which tobacco, slaves, spices, beaver pelts, China bowls, and South American silver are wrenching together hitherto well-insulated peoples. We hear behind the willow-pattern calm the crash of waves and cannon. A common humanity with a shared history comes about, with handshakes and treaties, shipwrecks and massacres, as trade expands and the world shrinks."--Anthony Bailey, author ofVermeer: A View of Delft "Vermeer's Hatis a deftly eclectic book, in which Timothy Brook

Author Biography

Timothy Brook completed this book while a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. He holds the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford University and is the author of many books, including the award-winning Confusions of Pleasure.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps	p. xi
The View from Delft	p. 1
Vermeer's Hat	p. 26
A Dish of Fruit	p. 54
Geography Lessons	p. 84
School for Smoking	p. 117
Weighing Silver	p. 152
Journeys	p. 185
Endings: No Man is an Island	p. 217
Acknowledgments	p. 231
Chinese and Japanese Publications	p. 233
Recommended Reading and Sources	p. 235
Notes	p. 259
Index	p. 263
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