BookwormBy John Andrews
I have kept my very special book of the year under wraps until this month, in the hope that it will qualify as that elusive present to give to someone who has everything. The book I have in mind is not fiction but history; however the story that is told is so far beyond imagination that it could qualify as fiction. Vermeer’s Hat, The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World is written in compelling fashion by Timothy Brooks and was first published in paperback by Profile Books in 2008.
Timothy Brooks holds the Shaw Chair in Chinese at Oxford University and is principal of St. Johns College at the University of British Columbia. He has written over a dozen books and won many prizes for his work mostly connected with his deep knowledge of all things Chinese.
In Vermeer’s Hat, Brooks looks at five paintings by Vermeer, one by Hendrik van der Burch and one by Leonaert Bramer, all painted in the mid 17th century in Holland. In one painting, a Dutch military officer leans towards a smiling 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. What is going on? What story is unfolding before our eyes? Vermeer’s images haunt us with their beauty and mystery. Through these intimate paintings Brooks introduces the reader to the rapidly expanding world of the seventeenth century, from the beaver-trappers of Canada and the silver mines of the Americas to Delft itself and the China seas.
Brooks is a wonderful storyteller with the ability to depict the lives of individuals against the background of the often impersonal and dangerous times in which they lived.