"Vermeer's Hat"

I recently started reading a book,

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

And frankly it is excellent. I have enjoyed every page of it and Timothy Brook is a master at story telling. His thesis is given on page 9 of his book:

"As we gaze at each of the seven paintings on which this book has been draped...We can still enjoy the pleasures of the surface, but I also want us to duck past the surface and look hard at the objects as signs of the time and place in which the painting was made. Such signs slipped into the picture as it was being painted largely unawares. Our task is to coax them out, so that we can in effect use the painting to tell not just its own story, but our own...If we think of objects in them not as props behind windows but as doors to open, then we will find ourselves in passageways leading to discoveries about the seventeenth-century world that the paintings on their own don't acknowledge, and of which the artist himself was probably unaware" (Brook, 9).

Brook has chosen 7 paintings by Vermeer as the framework of this book. From within the paintings the Chinese historian picks out certain objects and uses them as a window into the seventeenth century world. For example, the second chapter is dubbed, "Vermeer's Hat" and he takes Vermeer's painting, Officer with a Laughing Girl, and gives readers an introduction of the changing relationships between men and women during the Dutch Golden Age in Delft. But he then goes on and uses the hat on the officer's head as a "door" into Canada where he spins the narrative of the story of Samuel Champlain and his alliance with the Huron Confederacy of Indians against the Iroquois Confederacy as he searched for beavers...for making hats. Just like the one that the officer is wearing on his head. That is essentially the book. Brook takes objects from the paintings and uses them to launch us into the seventeenth century world.

I will add further posts about this book as well. It is truly fascinating.

Lars Brownworth

I have come to deeply appreciate the work of Lars Brownworth. His podcasts are great and I am eagerly waiting the next episode of Norman Centuries to come out on i-tunes. I recommend both his 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast and certainly his Norman Centuries podcast. I believe he is really defining a genre of a new generation of historians who will use technology like podcasting to both popularize history and make a name for themselves. It is also interesting that he was a history teacher when he did his first podcast: 12 Byzantine Rulers. If you click on the links from the write up about him it will bring you to his websites. Also there is a link to his website below. Enjoy.

Here is a write up about him from his website:

"Lars Brownworth is an author, speaker and broadcaster based in Maryland, USA.
Mr. Brownworth created the genre-defining 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast, which prompted the New York Times to liken him to some of history's great popularizers. Recently, he finished a book titled Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, which is available in bookstores now. He speaks at various conferences and is currently working on a new podcast that brings to life the reign of the Normans.
Lars Brownworth has a new blog called Finding History where he answers questions from his podcast and book projects."

Check out his website:

http://www.larsbrownworth.com/

The History of Rome

In my studies in college and in my reading I have never looked much into the history of Rome...which is obviously a crucial epoch in the history of the West but I have never had the opportunity to really look into it. I have recently come across this podcast which has proved to be both informative and very interesting. It is done by a guy named Mike Duncan. He is much like another history "pod-caster" I have come to enjoy named Lars Brownworth who has two podcasts: 12 Byzantine Rulers (which he finished) and Norman Centuries (current). I will post a link to his podcasts later. But for now here is the link to Duncan's website. You could find his podcast on i-tunes. It is free to listen to and FULL of great information on Roman History.

Enjoy:
http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684)

This week I subbed for an art teacher and found a book in his room about Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) a Dutch painter during the Dutch Golden Age (an epoch I am fascinated with). He was a contemperary with one of my favorite artists of all time Jan Vermeer but I had not heard much about Hooch, frankly there is not much known about him. He painted during the Dutch Golden age. He was born in Rotterdam and soon moved to Delf where he joined the Delf school (with Vermeer). Soon the lucrative draw of Amsterdam drew him to the thriving city to continue his work. Hooch painted on a very symbolic level emphasizing certain moral aspects of the Netherlands, particularly on family life; and more particularly on the life of women. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is a phrase that captures much of his painting. He painted much on the theme of the domesticated life of Dutch women. Dutch merchant men were constantly traveling. Their lives described by Daniel Defoe in 1728 as, "the carryers of the World, the middle persons in Trade, the Factors and Brokers of Europe: they buy to sell again, take in to send out; and the greatest part of their vast commerce consists in being supply's from all parts of theWorld, that they may supply all the World again." While men were doing this the women need to keep the house clean and control finances, etc. Many of the paintings have a theme of cleanliness and order in the house. His paintings show children being raised right and then moving into the world. Hooch emphasized the importance of Dutch women and the virtues of domesticated life. His paintings were also moral lessons and sometimes showed the perils of immoral lives as well as Dutch painting was often proverbial in scope.

See some of his paintings from the Web Gallery of Art: http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

The Instability of Human Affairs

This is an paragraph from a letter sent by Captain Sir William Sidney Smith to General Napoleon Bonaparte after the Anglo-Turkish victory at Acre. Through the leadership of Smith the French were stopped from entering India. What is more amazing is that Smith had just escaped from the Tower (the French prison that Louis XVI had been prisoner in) on Tuesday 24, April 1798 a year earlier with the help of French Royalists. It was on the May 20, 1799 that Smith's forces (combined English and Turkish) stopped Napoleon:

"I, who ought not to love you, to say nothing more: but circumstances remind me to wish that you would reflect on the instability of human affairs. In fact, could you have thought that a poor prisoner in a cell of the Temple prison-that an unfortunate for whom you refused, for a single moment, to give yourself any concern, being at the same time able to render him a signal service, since you were then all-powerful-could you have thought, I say, that this same man would have become your antagonist, and have compelled you, in the midst of the sands of Syria, to raise the siege of a miserable, almost defenceless town? Such events, you must admit, exceed all human calculations. Believe me, general, adopt sentiments more moderate, and that man will not be your enemy, who shall tell you that Asia is not a theatre made for your glory. The letter is a little revenge that I give myself."

The Grand Stage

"History is the grand stage upon which the drama of human ideas is performed. Ideas are the playwrights and all those who live upon the plains of time are the actors and actresses."