Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Focusing on the extraordinary Lacemaker from the Mus#65533;e du Louvre, this beautiful book investigates the subtle and enigmatic paintings by Johannes Vermeer that celebrate the intimacy of the Dutch household. Moments frozen in paint that reveal young women sewing, reading or playing musical instruments, captured in Vermeer's uniquely luminous style, recreate a silent and often mysterious domestic realm, closed to the outside world, and inhabited almost exclusively by women and children. 

Three internationally recognized experts in the field explain why women engaged in mundane domestic tasks, or in pleasurable pastimes such as music making, writing letters, or adjusting their toilette, comprise some of the most popular Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century. Among the most intriguing of these compositions are those that consciously avoid any engagement with the viewer. Rather than acknowledging our presence, figures avert their gazes or turn their backs upon us; they stare moodily into space or focus intently on the activities at hand. In viewing these paintings, we have the impression that we have stumbled upon a private world kept hidden from casual regard. 

The ravishingly beautiful paintings of Vermeer are perhaps the most poetic evocations of this secretive world, but other Dutch painters sought to imbue simple domestic scenes with an air of silent mystery, and the book also features works by some of the most important masters of 17th-century Dutch genre painting, among them Gerard ter Borch, Gerrit Dou, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolaes Maes, and Jan Steen.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Through his depictions of women, one comes closest to the heart of Vermeer's paintings, and the great virtue of this handsomely produced book is its focus on the Dutch master's treatment of this subject. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of 32 works by Vermeer and related 17th-century Dutch artists, this publication includes three essays on Vermeer's paintings of lace makers, letter writers and letter readers, milkmaids, guitar players, and other such subjects by Wieseman (National Gallery, London), Chapman (Delaware), and Franits (Syracuse), who are among the most distinguished experts in the field. They mix close analysis of the paintings themselves with discussion of domestic architecture, Vermeer patrons, x-radiographs and other such technical matters, contemporary poetry, clothing and hairstyles, and much else. Following these essays are lively entries on each of the works in the exhibition, accompanied by scholarly footnotes. Although this is not the first book on Vermeer that serious students should read (exhibition catalogues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art would be more appropriate for that), it throws an interesting and illuminating light on one of the great painters of the 17th century. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through graduate students; general readers. F. W. Robinson Cornell University