Vermeer's Hat" offers us a rich new understanding both of Vermeer's paintings & of the era they portray. ' Effortless & compelling Brooks is a wonderful storyteller. I doubt I will read a better book this year'
- " Sunday Telegraph". In one painting a Dutch military officer leans toward a laughing girl. In another a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. The officer's dashing hat is made from beaver fur which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. 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. Vermeer's haunting images hint at the stories behind these exquisitely rendered moments. As Timothy Brook shows us in " Vermeer's Hat" these pictures which seem so intimate actually open doors onto a rapidly expanding world."