Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world - Tapa dura

A more entertaining guide to world history is difficult to imagine.

(Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome)

Brook takes his readers on a journey that encompasses Chinese porcelain and beaver pelts, global temperatures and firearms, shipwrecked sailors, silver mines and Manila galleons. A book full of surprising pleasures. (Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China)

The writing is informed, evocative, grips the attention. (Svetlana Alpers London Review of Books 2009-02-26)

Enthralling... original and stimulating... Vermeer's hat is a jewel of a study of two distinct yet intertwined worlds, feeling their way together towards modernity (Lisa Jardine Literary Review)

Brook's eye conjures up the invisible vistas through Vermeer's open windows (Peter Conrad Observer)

An adventure in itself... clear, original, thoughtful and engaging (Spectator)

Spellbinding...as a guide to the world behind the pictures Vermeer's Hat is mind-expanding (John Carey Sunday Times)

From the epicentre of Delft in the Netherlands Brook takes the paintings of Johannes Vermeer and uses details of them as a series of entry points to the widest circles of world trade and cultural exchange in the seventeenth century. An officer's beaver hat in 'Officer and the Laughing Girl' opens up the story of Champlain's dealing with the native peoples of Canada and the beaver trade. A china dish on a table in another painting uncovers the story of the Chinese porcelain trade. Moving outwards from Vermeer's studio Brook traces the web of trade that was spreading across the globe, from firearms to silver mines and Manila galleons. And his vision embraces many personal stories - of an African slave and a Chinese aesthete, of a Dutch gunsmith stranded in Korea and of Vermeer himself.