Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of ... (ISBN 1596914440)

Really surprised me with its excellence:
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!

Original:
Vermeer's Hat is a wonderfully creative book that delves into the broader picture of global trade in the seventeenth century through Johannes Vermeer's paintings. I had some introduction to Vermeer in art appreciation classes, but Brook effectively uses the objects seen in some of his well known paintings to enlighten us about the goings and comings in a world being transformed by trade. Even the effects of climate change figure into his painting of the city of Delft, as revealed by the fishing vessels seen. From the Turkish rugs, Chinese porcelain, and silver seen in some of Vermeer's work, we begin to see the evidence of the effects of global trade with other countries, most notably China, as the author gives great attention to. Brook uses the city of Delft, Vermeer's residence, as a starting point for understanding global trade at that time. Through the paintings of that art master we see the signs of a world that stretched far beyond Vermeer's native soil. We learn of The Dutch East India Company's role in the local economy and the transporting of thousands of Holland's citizens to far off lands in their efforts to make a better living for themselves and to bring back goods that were in demand in their native land. The stories of shipwreck survivors and victims, Jesuit missionaries in China, the tobacco craze, silver currency extracted from South America bound for China and or Europe, Chinese culture and customs and their own outlook on the rest of the world, all come into focus in this book. Some of the stories are horrific and brutal. The competition between European powers for the Asian market also figures into this story. Brook is to be commended for offering a fairly unique way of looking at the bigger picture (no pun intended) through the window of Johannes Vermeer's paintings.

Look, and you'll find the whole world in a painter's studio:
A beaver hat on a laughing officer in one of Vermeer's Dutch interiors sends the author -- and the reader -- on a global journey far from the tiny province of the Netherlands in the 17th century. More than three centuries ago, the Dutch were at the intersection of an embryonic global trade network, making their first tentative footsteps into the Chinese market (sending porcelain back to be painted in other Vermeer works); importing the beaver furs needed to make the officer's hat from their new colony in what is today New York, and buying silver from Spanish mines in Peru. Brook came to this book by virtue of his knowledge of China; the reader can approach from any angle and come away enriched by an awareness of the ways in which politics, business, society and culture overlap, and the degree to which the global trading networks to which we point in pride today have their roots in these long, arduous and dangerous voyages by some of the world's first "venture capitalists". One of the highlights of the book is the way that Brook finds a fresh way to describe Vermeer's paintings, only a handful of which still exist today and which have become iconic images. It takes great skill as a writer to draw our attention to the smallest details of these tableaux vivants and then widen the 'frame' to show their connection to the broader world Vermeer inhabited. Above all, it took great insight and historical skill to conceive and structure this book. The result is a tour-de-force that proves the possibility of producing a book that is simultaneously scholarly and a fantastic, fast-paced read. Bravo!

Early Stage of Globalization:
This is a very entertaining book, which oddly enough has very little to do with Vermeer and if you are trying to comprehend a certain transcendental quality in Vermeer's love of light and silence, you will find nothing here. The author uses some of the items in Vermeer's paintings as jumping off points, he calls them portals, for discussing what was going on in the world. So the weighing of silver coins leads us to a very interesting discourse on the effect vast quantities of silver had on the world. Nor is it told in boring generalizations. We learn in that chapter for instance that during a stoppage of silver into the Chinese economy, a week's worth of rice could be had for two children, i.e. in exchange for two children. In fact, the author is an expert on China and that's where the primary interest in the book lies. Other reviewers have mentioned the superb chapter on tobacco, and I agree, and that was nearly all about how tobacco came into Chinese life in a very big way. The heavy use of tobacco prepared the Chinese for opium, which was certainly one of the factors in that civilization's downfall. The Dutch as global merchants and sometimes pirates are far less appealing historically than Vermeer and the other great Dutch masters, and I think you come away with more knowledge of the merchants than the masters, but don't let that deter you. The hat in the title is the "portal" for a very interesting digression into French Canada in Champlain's time (where the beavers were from whose pelts the bet felt for hats was made). There is really no discussion about the painting as a painting. All of which is to say again: it's not an art historical book, but is nevertheless very good and very interesting.

This was a Christmas gift:
This was a Christmas present and I haven't heard from the person I gave it to that it was bad, so I assumed they liked it. They requested it.