Eye of the Beholder

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 unde......more

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 o......more

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 she was covering similar grou......more

Ciencia y arte a partes iguales en este magnífico ensayo de Laura J. Snyder que, a través de dos genios como Vermeer y Leeuwenhoek, ambos coetáneos, ambos de Delft, ambos posiblemente amigos, nos sumerge en los Países Bajos del siglo XVII, en una de sus épocas doradas. Sobre las biografías y las obr......more

(4,5/5) He disfrutado mucho y me he sumergido más en el pasado que con casi cualquier novela histórica. La autora hace un trabajo de reconstrucción estupendo y combina magistralmente aspectos de la historia del arte con otros de la historia de la ciencia. La estructura alternante del libro (entre Van......more