Vermeer and the Delft School

New York / New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale University Press, 2001. Paperback. VG- light corner wear and minor soiling to text blocks. Color illustrated glossy wraps with white lettering. 640 pp., 225 vivid color plates, 301 crisp bw plates and illustrations. This massive compendium includes 91 paintings (14 of them by Vermeer), forty drawings and a choice selection of decorative arts from the period. A blockbuster exhibition that will take a long time to replicate. This catalogue does a remarkable job of showing Vermeer in the context of his times and his contemporaries, especially with the inclusioon of so many objects of decorative arts. From DJ: "Seventeenth-century Delft has often been viewed as a quaint town whose artists painted scenes of domestic life. This important book revises that image, showing that the small but vibrant Dutch city produced a wide range of artworks, including luxurious tapestries and silver objects, as well as sophisticated paintings for the court at The Hague and for patrician collectors in Delft itself. The volume traces the history and culture of Delft from the 1200s through the lifetime of the city's most renowned painter, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Some ninety paintings (sixteen of them by Vermeer), forty drawings, and a choice selection of decorative arts are examined at length and reproduced in full color. The paintings include state portraits, history pictures, still lifes, views of palaces and church interiors, illusionistic murals, and refined genre pictures by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. Besides magnificent still lifes, portraits, and landscapes, the rich works on paper encompass exquisite drawings by Delft artists on the vellum pages of a presentation album and sketches of the town by visiting artists. Among the decorative arts are tapestries, bronze statuary, silver gilt, Delftware, and glass. Some two hundred additional works, by both Delft artists and masters from other Dutch cities, are also illustrated and discussed. A final essay takes the reader on a walk through seventeenth-century Delft. It is accompanied by maps of the city's neighborhoods that indicate major landmarks and the homes of patrons, art dealers, and artists--who, in addition to De Hooch and Vermeer, include Balthasar van der Ast, Leonaert Bramer, Carel Fabritius, Gerard Houckgeest, Michiel van Miereveld, Adam Pynacker, Jan Steen, Willem and Hendrick van Vliet, and Emanuel de Witte.