Customer Reviews

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The entire book revolves around the analysis of seven key paintings from Vermeer's time - NOT ONE OF THEM IS INCLUDED IN THE KINDLE EDITION!!!!!!!!!!!

A fascinating, erudite but easy-to-read series of chapters on trade, exploration, cross-cultural influence and physical culture, using 17th century Delft as the starting point. but reaching around the globe to Asia and the Americas. I'm a huge Vermeer fan and I visited Delft last April, so the book had an added resonance to me. Although you don't need to be an art lover to appreciate the book, a familiarity with Vermeer makes the argument event more interesting. I visited the Frick Collection yesterday and saw the image on the cover for the 20th time and noticed things I'd never realized before. The book brings to mind Jonathan Spence's "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" and the Simon Schama's "The Embarassment of Riches," (both authors blurbed this book) although it's probably an easier read than either. If you like books like those and "Longitude," you'll love this. Not so much an art history book -- and not a replacement for the other books on Vermeer as an artist -- but a cultural historian's look at an important era in the opening up of the world.

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!

The more accurate title of this book would be selective anecdotes of trade between the Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese in the 17c, with a sidebar about Canada and England. He uses microcosms to illustrate a macrocosm, but there's not enough of the latter for my taste. Not that I feel a writer should force conclusions, but the execution here felt too patchwork. Using individuals to connect an audience to larger events is a good approach. Most of the people in this were mildly interesting, and one was compelling. Vermeer is only used in a very impersonal way, which was disappointing. The book opens with the author himself, which didn't appeal to me.

The biggest issue I had by the end was the author's tone. It was just smug enough to distract from the subject. It's not so strong that it can't be overlooked, so three stars.

Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook is a rich examination of the growth of commerce in the seventeeth century using, of all things, the art of Johannes Vermeer. Wonderful.

Before finding Vermeer's Hat I had never heard of the artist. So much for my general education in college. However, during the time I read Vermeer's Hat I managed to find a number of websites devoted to this not minor artist. The best is at www.ballandclaw.com/vermeer/chron.html. At this website you will find a chronological listing of his works along with terrific images. Vermeer's Hat, the cover image on the book is there and is cross listed with another image in which the same map appears.

Brook uses the art of Johannes Vermeer to demonstrate the growth in commerce during the 1600's by focusing on items that appear in the images. This reminds me a great deal of the PBS program Connections that was popular during the 70's and 80's. Also, the information in Vermeer's Hat reminds me of works by Fernand Braudel in his Civilization trilogy.

While each and every chapter has a great deal to convey, I found Chapter 5, "School for Smoking" to be of particular interest. Brook's examination of first the discovery by Europeans of tobacco and then the world wide spread of the plant and the resultant almost universal acceptance of smoking is truly eye opening. Children smoking in China or at least carrying pipes to look older is surprising. While some monarchs fruitlessly tried to ban smoking the populace continued on, even on the threat of beheading. Manchu soldiers selling their weapons to buy tobacca is a piece of trivia I'll carry for years to come. This chapter puts some of todays issues about smoking and substance abuse in perspective.

Well researched and wonderfully written, Vermeer's Hat will open many windows for the interested reader. I have enjoyed my introduction to Vermeer and am thankful for Timothy Brook for the favor.

I highly recommend Vermeer's Hat.

Timothy Brook examines some of Vermeer's most well known paintings and discovers the complicated world of the seventeenth century can be reached and revived through them. I have admired Vermeer's paintings for many years, but I never realized how much they reflect the world at the time. Even the simplest objects which to the untrained eye look just randomly placed to frame the main subject of a painting turn out to have a deep meaning. A beaver hat and a porcelain bowl remind us of the world wide trade network, the confident smile on a pretty girl's face demonstrates the rise in European women's status, a map on a wall indicates new political and military power, and so on. This is an excellent work of history, and a reminder of why historians should take even the unlikeliest of objects into account.

In 1660 or 1661 Vermeer painted "A View of Delft," his hometown in Holland. In that picture looms a massive roofline, sheltering the offices of the Dutch East India Company (known as the VOC), which was happily (and unconsciously) engaged in irrevocably changing the world. What the VOC's merchant members thought they were doing was trying to make a few (okay--a lot) of guilders from trading with China, Japan and every other East Asian country that would have them. To do so required endangering thousands of men and (eventually) hundreds of ships in vastly perilous voyages of exploration, trading, diplomacy, piracy and pillage, with conquest, enslavement and colonization thrown in as opportunity offered. The VOC's efforts (and those of competitors from elsewhere in Europe) created the first world-wide commercial trading channels, something utterly different from the trickle of trade in luxury items that had existed since ancient times.

Author Brook uses the VOC building and details from other Vermeer paintings as "portals" into the seventeenth century to describe VOC and its competitors beginning to bring disparate peoples into ever closer and inescapably permanent contact. The weighing of some silver, for example, opens the story of how silver flooded the world in the seventeenth century causing not only profound economic changes but equally deep changes in cultures and outlooks. For good or ill the seventeenth century began the commercialization and shrinking of the world that continues today and did so at the cost of much treasure, blood and personal and cultural displacement (although with much gain in some quarters as well). It is always so, as our own times confirm.

The book can only hint at the full story but Brook provides an ample array of sources and recommended readings for those interested in going further. He does well at showing not only how products swept from one end of the globe to the other but also how their sweep often left human fear, disruption and suffering in its wake.

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.

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 best 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 very enjoyable book that at once gives you some perspective on Holland in the 17th century and especially on the intercourse between Asia and Europe at that time. The focus is modern : on everyday life and the introduction of new technologies/knowledge/trade/products to the world (ex tobacco).

The main focus of this book is on Asia however... not a book to read if your primary interest is Vermeer or Holland at that time.

I found it a good book to read along with "Samurai William" by Giles Milton, about the real-life Anjin-San who inspired James Clavell's "Shogun".