Customer Reviews

Jan & Catharina

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Reading JAN & CATHARINA was, for me, an immersion into two worlds I love, the world of art and Jan Vermeer, and the distinct world that is Holland (though inseparable from its treasury of art). I had the pleasure, earlier last year, of visiting the country and allowing myself to be dissolved into the art, history and culture of this unique place. This book gave me a chance to revisit this time and to indulge in some good old fashioned fantasy, seasoned with just enough reality. JAN & CATHARINA is pure joy both visually and mentally!

This fictional biography of Johannes (Jan) Vermeer, and his wife Catharina, is utterly luscious, enveloping, a literary dream come true. I used to want to live in Paris. Now, that dream is over. I want to live in Delft, and follow in the distant footsteps - as outlined so seductively by Michael Tobias - of Vermeer.

Having read, and re-read this gorgeous novel (with incredible photographs hand-crafted for the book by Rocky Schenck), I now put Vermeer and Leonardo in the same class. What Tobias' immense scholarship has done is provide a gift to the rest of us: a gift of the Netherlands; a gift of art; and a GREAT GIFT of literature.

To begin, a confession. I bought this book primarily because of its design and illustrations. It is graced with black-and-white photographs by Rocky Schenk, images which in their intended blurriness are reminscent of watercolors. Interspersed throughout the book are full-page translucent sheets with details from paintings of Vermeer.

I wish the text had been has compelling. The protagonist is an FBI agent who is sent to the Netherlands to try to locate and recover a Vermeer painting that has been stolen from a Boston museum. There seems to be no reason for this. He is not an art expert, not a part of the art squad. For the flimsiest of reasons, he is also himself suspected of the theft. This assignment thus beggars belief. How someone with a few weeks training in Dutch art is expected to realistically set up as an antiques dealer in order to lure the thief to him is, frankly, beyond me.

In Delft, our hero wanders into a bakery, and immediately falls for a young woman who works there, an infatuation that he later realizes connects to her resemblance to Vermeer's wife, whose name, you will not be surprised to learn, is the same as the young woman's. Throughout the book, imagined scenes from Vermeer's life are juxtaposed with the activities of the protagonist (who has taken the alias "Jan" for his assignment). Connections and coincidences abound. Logic and common sense, so necessary to any detective story, do not.