Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing - Tapa blanda

Elegantly written intellectual history . . . fascinating.--Deborah Blum

An engaging and richly detailed work of interdisciplinary history.--Jonathan Lopez

A thoughtful elaboration of the modern notion of seeing. Laura J. Snyder delves into the seventeenth century fascination with the tools of art and science, and shows how they came together to help us make sense of what is right in front of our eyes.--Russell Shorto, author of Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

Beautifully evokes the ambience of late-seventeenth-century Delft . . . revelatory about Vermeer's aims and methods, helping to explain what is so mesmeric about his work.--Philip Ball

[Snyder] paints this vibrant world with verve, adding a wealth of details--as if following the slow and conscientious working methods of her protagonists....[giving] us as readers a lively sense of this exciting period and a thorough insight into the wider implications of these technological developments.--Hanneke Grootenboer

Irresistible. . . . [Snyder] ingeniously explores the minutiae of her subjects' lives to reveal sweeping changes in how their world was understood--ones that still resonate today.--Jonathon Keats

Taking readers to 17th-century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, an extraordinary story reveals how two geniuses—a self-taught natural philosopher and an artist—transformed the way we see the world by coming to the realization that there is more than meets the eye.