Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook

Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook

In this critical darling Vermeer's captivating and enigmatic paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought-from Delft to Beijing--were transformed in the 17th century, when the world first became global.

A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur from North America, and it was beaver pelts from America that financed the voyages of explorers seeking routes to China-prized for the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time, including Vermeer's. In this dazzling history, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer's works, and other contemporary images from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to trace the rapidly growing web of global trade, and the explosive, transforming, and sometimes destructive changes it wrought in the age when globalization really began.

Timothy Brook is the author of several books, including Vermeer's Hat, Confusions of Pleasure, and Great State. He is a professor and writer on Chinese and world history at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. A native of Toronto and graduate of the University of Toronto, he moved from Toronto in 2004 to become principal of St. John's College at UBC, where he was named to the Republic of China Chair. He previously held positions at the University of Alberta, Stanford University, and the University of Oxford, where he was Shaw Professor of Chinese from 2007 to 2009.