Article: Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland, Denver, MacMurray and Beck, 1999; 242 pages, $17.50 hardcover.(Review)

Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland, Denver, MacMurray and Beck, 1999; 242 pages, $17.50 hardcover.

Five novels and an opera, all recently released, attest to an ongoing popular fascination with--and mistaken view of--Vermeer and his historic Dutch context.

Reading in succession five recent novels that draw on the art world of 17th-century Holland (and seeing an opera set in the same milieu) is an all too revealing experience. Four of the books introduce a female protagonist into the studio of a male artist devoted to painting genre scenes, especially pictures of intriguing women. The women sit for the painters as models, and here is what happens to ...

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