Vermeer's Hat - Timothy Brook

If a picture paints a thousand words, then Timothy Brook provides the dictionary we can use to make sense of the vocabulary. Using five paintings by the seventeenth century Delft artist Johannes Vermeer along with a blue and white porcelain plate and the works of two of Vermeer's contemporaries, Brook demonstrates how the far flung corners of the seventeenth century world were drawn together by the ambitions of European merchants and the ability of Asia, Africa and the Americas to provided the materials to fulfil them. Brook likens each work of art to a door and by entering it, we can be transported around a rapidly expanding world; a seemingly simple object ...  Read the complete review