Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing

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 attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld See for yourself was the clarion call of the 1600s Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings of flowers and insects, and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is than meets the eye But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see In answering these questions, scientists and artists in Delft changed how we perceive the world.In Eye of the Beholder, Laura J Snyder transports us to the streets, inns, and guildhalls of seventeenth century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, and to their studios and laboratories, where they mixed paints and prepared canvases, ground and polished lenses, examined and dissected insects and other animals, and invented the modern notion of seeing With charm and narrative flair Snyder brings Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek and the men and women around them vividly to life The story of these two geniuses and the transformation they engendered shows us why we see the world and our place within it as we do today.Eye of the Beholder was named A Best Art Book of the Year by Christie s and A Best Read of the Year by New Scientist in 2015. Read Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing – kino-fada.fr An interesting look at a time and place of intellectual ferment The 17th century Dutch Republic Both Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek would make innovations in the arts and science with Vermeer s snapshots of life in ordinary places, and Leeuwenhoek s discovery of worlds ...I don t know why I was under the impression that this was historical fiction it s not I really should have added it to my list of books to read sooner What a rich and wonderful history of both Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek The author serves partly as a time traveling sleuth to understand if there might have been a relationship between Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek To do this, she sifts through and parses research done by other but has conducted quite a bit of I don t know why I was under the impression that this was historical fiction it s not I really should have added it to my list of books to read sooner What a rich and wonderful history of both Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek The author serves partly as a time traveling sleuth to understand if there might have been a relationship between Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek To do this, she sifts through and parses research done by other but has conducted quite a bit ...One of the things that we sometimes overlook when we tell the stories of the way the world we know came to be is how much of it happened at the same time We look at this development or that discovery in isolation and often don t consider the other things that may have been going on at the time, perhaps even in almost the same place.Laura Snyder s 2015 Eye of the Beholder bridges one of those gaps by observing the way that different people in the Netherlands in the 17th century began using One of the things that we sometimes overlook when we tell the stories of the way the world we know came to be is how much of it happened at the same time We look at...An intriguing study of optics early history and then the imaginative uses made of optics by artist Johannes Vermeer and father of microbiology Antoni van Leeuwenhoek As a fan of Vermeer s art, I found the explanations the close study of his paintings in terms of his use of light and the effects on emotion and tone to be absolutely fascinating Van Leeuwenhoek s studies were equally intriguing, although I admit I couldn t listen to some of the...This book is described as being about Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek s use of new optical tools the camera obscura and the microscope to expand the horizons of art and science Unfortunately it has a few flaws that detract from what could have been ainteresting book First, much of what is written about Vermeer s use of the camera obscura is as much conjecture as established...This is an interesting exploration of how the artist Vermeer and the scientist Leuwenhoeck changed our way of seeing The author is very circumspect over whether they actually knew each other, but it seems they probably did It dragged in places, but that may be because...This was a good choice to read after finishing the biography of Leonardo da Vinci In this book, we learn about the further achievements of two men whose work builds in many ways on parts of da Vinci s work, in both art and science Author Laura Snyder argues that two 17th century Dutchmen Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek each in his own way changed forever how people saw the world around them Snyder makes the case compellingly for the microscopist Leeuwenhoek, but less effectively for the artist This was a good choice to read after finishing the biography of Leonardo da Vinci In this book, we learn about the furthe...Eye of the Beholder Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuvenhoek and the reinvention of seeing, by Laura J Snyder Norton, 2015 Snyder here mines a slightly earlier period and a different country from The Philosophical Breakfast Club Here she argues that in Delft, the Netherlands, during the second half of the 17th century, Leeuvenhoek and Vermeer developed a dramatic new way of seeing the world, through microscopy and painting The context the slowly developing understanding that light Eye of the Beholder Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuvenhoek and the reinvention of seeing, by Laura J Snyder Norton, 2015 Snyder here mines a slightly earlier period and a different country from The Philosophical Breakfast Club Here she argues that in Delft, the Netherlands, during the second half of the 17th century, Leeuvenhoek and Vermeer developed a dramatic new way of seeing the world, through microscopy and painting The context the slowly developing understanding that light moves through space, that the eye does not radiate the things that we see She provides a great deal of detailed context on the development of theories of sight, increased understanding of perspective, the invention of the camera obscura, which enabled...This is an interesting and scholarly book that deals with the scientific revolution and the cluster of genius of the early 17th century Dutch Republic It mainly focuses on Vermeer and Leeuwenhoek, who lived across the street from one another and facilitates description of the larger issues Lens grinding was all the rage and allowed people to extend their senses via telescopes, microscopes and the camera obscura Using the device revealed unexpected details of the world and in addition to This is an interesting and scholarly book that...Having read this book I will look at Dutch art of the 1600 s in an entirely new way What better recommendation for reading this book Snyder writes very carefully to reconstruct the social, economic, and intellegentia s worlds of Delft, the Netherlands, and England and to a certain extent other countries polities of Europe Like Vermeer she is able to describe so that we can see clearly the worlds these two men lived in a good historian, she carefully disting...

• English
• 15 October 2018
Laura J. Snyder
• Paperback
• 448 pages
• 0393352889
• Laura J. Snyder
• Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing