Defying the myth of the “Dutch Golden Age,” award-winning author Neil Thomas Proto weaves the documented strands of terror, slavery, and condescension with risk-taking, courage, and dissent into a revealing imperative underlying the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. Through his art, Vermeer waged a civic battle against the malicious forces of religious and social repression his countrymen unleashed at home and abroad. The Dutch used the law and the unfettered corporate power of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, sustained by a prosperous, amoral middle class.

In a unique format—The Author’s Bearings—Proto also calls upon his own experiences, research, writings, and insight as a witness to forms of repression to probe beneath, at times penetrate, the heavily coated rhetorical varnish that has clouded Vermeer’s imperatives, life, and artistic choices and, most importantly, his remarkable work.