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

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
By Timothy Brook

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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.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #115168 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-12-26
  • Released on: 2007-12-26
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 288 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Elegant and quietly important…. Brook does more than merely sketch the beginnings of globalization and highlight the forces that brought our modern world into being; rather, he offers a timely reminder of humanity's interdependence."   —Seattle Times

"This book will certainly make you look differently at Vermeer's paintings, as you imagine the greater context of the time period and ponder the acquisition of seemingly minor objects. An insightful read for historians and art historians alike and a fine guide into the rewards of studying material culture."--Library Journal

"Brook utilizes the props in Vermeer's tableaux as starting points to journey into the cultural and economic world of the time: A teacup pours forth the history of the porcelain trade with China, while a felt hat is traced to beaver trapping in North America.  It's a fascinating approach to cultural history, providing new ways of thinking about the origins of commonplace objects." —Entertainment Weekly, A grade, EW Pick

"Marvelous….The tidbits are fascinating in their own right, but Brook has a larger point, relevant to our own time: We need to narrate the past in a way that recognizes connections, not just divisions." —Bookpage

“…effective and illuminating….A magic-carpet conducted by a genial, learned host.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Brook...accomplishes his task...with authority and economy.” —Booklist

"Vermeer's Hat is a deftly eclectic book, in which Timothy Brook uses details drawn from the great painter's work as a series of entry points to the widest circles of world trade and cultural exchange in the seventeenth century. From the epicenter of Delft, Brook takes his readers on a journey that encompasses Chinese porcelain and beaver pelts, global temperatures and firearms, shipwrecked sailors and their companions, silver mines and Manila galleons. It is a book full of surprising pleasures." — Jonathan Spence, author of The Death of Woman Wang, In Search of Modern China and The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

“[Vermeer's Hat] is an absolutely wonderful idea, beautifully executed (and I wish I'd thought of it). In Timothy Brook's hands, Vermeer's paintings really do become windows on the past, illuminating a fascinating period in which the world was being remade by global trade. —  Tom Standage, author of A History of the World in Six Glasses

"Thanks to Brook’s roving and insatiably curious gaze, Vermeer’s small scenes widen onto the broad panorama of world history: everything from shipwrecks and massacres to global weather patterns and the history of tobacco. The result is like one of Vermeer’s trademark reflective pearls that magically reveals a world beyond itself. A more entertaining guide to world history - and to Vermeer - is difficult to imagine." —Ross King, author of The Judgment of Paris, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling and Brunelleschi’s Dome

“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 of Vermeer: A View of Delft

About the Author

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.

Customer Reviews

As interesting as Jonathan Spence and Simon Schama5
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.

Really surprised me with its excellence5
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!

Connections a plenty5
Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook is a rich examination of the growth of commerce in the seventeeth century using, of all things, the art of Johannes Vermeer. Wonderful.

Before finding Vermeer's Hat I had never heard of the artist. So much for my general education in college. However, during the time I read Vermeer's Hat I managed to find a number of websites devoted to this not minor artist. The best is at www.ballandclaw.com/vermeer/chron.html. At this website you will find a chronological listing of his works along with terrific images. Vermeer's Hat, the cover image on the book is there and is cross listed with another image in which the same map appears.

Brook uses the art of Johannes Vermeer to demonstrate the growth in commerce during the 1600's by focusing on items that appear in the images. This reminds me a great deal of the PBS program Connections that was popular during the 70's and 80's. Also, the information in Vermeer's Hat reminds me of works by Fernand Braudel in his Civilization trilogy.

While each and every chapter has a great deal to convey, I found Chapter 5, "School for Smoking" to be of particular interest. Brook's examination of first the discovery by Europeans of tobacco and then the world wide spread of the plant and the resultant almost universal acceptance of smoking is truly eye opening. Children smoking in China or at least carrying pipes to look older is surprising. While some monarchs fruitlessly tried to ban smoking the populace continued on, even on the threat of beheading. Manchu soldiers selling their weapons to buy tobacca is a piece of trivia I'll carry for years to come. This chapter puts some of todays issues about smoking and substance abuse in perspective.

Well researched and wonderfully written, Vermeer's Hat will open many windows for the interested reader. I have enjoyed my introduction to Vermeer and am thankful for Timothy Brook for the favor.

I highly recommend Vermeer's Hat.