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Showing posts with the label Johannes Vermeer

Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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Nonfiction November - Vermeer's Little Street by Frans Gruzenhout

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  I bought two books when I visited Delft earlier this year. All about Delft and painter Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer mostly painted interiors from his(?) house. Young ladies in different occupations around the house, working, maybe being visited by a suitor, or just having a good time. He painted three outside views of which only two are known to exist today. One is  View of Delft and one is The Little Street.  Both wonderful, as everything that he painted. "After 1696 we lose sight of The Little Street and the View of Delft for a very long time, and we have heard nothing whatsoever about the third town-scape since then. It is possible that it is lurking unrecognized as an anonymous work in a collection somewhere, or has been lost. The Little Street did not surface for more than a century, when it appeared in the estate of Gerrit Willem van Oosten de Bruyn, who died in Haarlem in 1797." Since Vermeer became popular again at the end of the 19th century, art historians inte...
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Nonfiction November - Week 2

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  We have reached week 2 of Nonfiction November, hosted by Julie@Julz Read . Week 2: (November 9-13) – is all about Book Pairing: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be an “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.  I read a lot of historical fiction, and find that I often want to read a nonfiction book just to see how well the author has followed history. I recently read The Girl Who Tempted Fortune  by Jane Ann McLachlan. It is set in the Kingdom of Naples at the beginning of the 14th century. I have read quite a lot about the time as regards the region of Tuscany and Milan, but not so much about Naples. So far I have not found a nonfiction book to read about this time. Could you recommend one?   After having visited Florence in February this year (just before the pandem...
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Bookmark Monday

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 Long time since I posted a bookmark here. Probably due to Corona, since travelling has been scarce. However, now I have made a short trip to Austria and Delft. You will find, in the coming days, two posts about these trips on The Content Reader Goes Outdoors . The meme is hosted by Guiltless Reading   although I think Aloi is mostly posting this meme on her twitter/instragram accounts with the same name.  In Delft, we visited churches and museums and I managed to find a bookmark of Girl With a Pearl Earring, one of the most popular paintings of Delft's famous son Johannes Vermeer. For my magnet collection on the fridge I bought another four motives by him; View of Delft, Little Street, Art of Painting, and Girl With a Pearl Earring.  In the Vermeer centre, I found two books which I am looking forward to reading. They are Vermeer's Little Street by Franz Gruzenhout. Not much is known about the exact location of the painting, so it reads like a mystery. The other...
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