On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby [...]

Now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Johannes Vermeer specialised in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life in his home city of Delft. The artist's reputation fell into obscurity after his death and it was not until the 19th century that his work was redis[...]

This fascinating book takes a fresh look at the innovative role Vermeer played in Dutch art in the seventeeth century. It examines four paintings by Vermeer in the Rijksmuseum's collection, which span his whole career. As a dedicated artist with extraordinary visual sensitivity, Vermeer used optical[...]