Eye of the Beholder

Author: 
Snyder, L.
Publisher: 
W. W. Norton & Company
Year: 
2015

Publisher's description:

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.

Author's web

Available at Amazon.com: Eye of the Beholder

Essay review of the book in Related sources below: The tensions between facts and fantasy