Description
In this critical darling Vermeer's captivating and enigmatic paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought-from Delft to Beijing--were transformed in the 17th century, when the world first became global.
A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur from North America, and it was beaver pelts from America that financed the voyages of explorers seeking routes to China-prized for the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time, including Vermeer's. In this dazzling history, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer's works, and other contemporary images from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to trace the rapidly growing web of global trade, and the explosive, transforming, and sometimes destructive changes it wrought in the age when globalization really began.Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 01/02/2009
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781596915992
ISBN10: 1596915994
BISAC Categories:
- History | Modern | 17th Century
- Art | History | Baroque & Rococo
- History | World | General
About the Author
Timothy Brook is a professor of history and principal of St. John's College at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of many books, including Vermeer's Hat, winner of the Mark Lynton Prize for outstanding achievement in world history, and Confusions of Pleasure, which received the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.