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Vermeer's Hat

The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

By Timothy Brook

(5)

| Hardcover | 9781596914445

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Book 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 DutcContinue

Critics

Where did you get that hat?

Vermeer's paintings are not known for their drama. A courting couple flirt and joke, a young girl reads a letter from a lover, a housewife does her accounts. And they do it all washed in a calm, clear light that speaks of stillness and an enduring no ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

Vermeer's Hat By Timothy Brook

Every time you call an outsourced computer help desk in Mumbai, you're continuing a tradition of international commerce that began as soon as human beings figured out how to cross mountains and oceans. But in a more practical sense, modern globalizat ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Thu, 16 Sep 2010

1 Review

The book is really very clever: take a few details from Vermeer's paintings and use them as the starting point for looking at what was going on in the globe in the XVII century, the year when, according to the author, globalization really got going. A slight pity is that since Brook is a sinologist ... (continue)

The book is really very clever: take a few details from Vermeer's paintings and use them as the starting point for looking at what was going on in the globe in the XVII century, the year when, according to the author, globalization really got going. A slight pity is that since Brook is a sinologist he tends to give to China an importance that is a bit too central, leaving aside other really important elements of trade in the 1600s, which get just a few passing comments -- like spices, for example, or the importance of the Ottoman empire, or the madness inspired by tulips. Thus, the book is slightly incomplete, but still a very worth while read, entertaining and instructive at the same time.

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ilariainthelibrary said on Jun 6, 2010 | Add your feedback