🎨 A New Era in Art History: Vermeer in Print
We are thrilled to announce the release of the printed English edition of IN TERRA VIVENTIUM - Vermeer by Philippe Ratte. This marks an important milestone in making this groundbreaking work accessible to a wider international audience.
🌅 From Medieval Shadows to Renaissance Light
With Vermeer, we leave behind the medieval world and step into a new age of humanism. While our previous publications explored the feudal structures and religious frameworks of the Middle Ages, this work transports us to the heart of the Dutch Golden Age—a period of unprecedented intellectual and artistic flourishing.
The 17th century Netherlands witnessed a remarkable convergence: while Johannes Vermeer captured light and domestic intimacy on canvas with revolutionary precision, Baruch Spinoza was reshaping philosophy with his rationalist approach to understanding God, nature, and human freedom. Both men, working in the same small country at the same time, embodied the humanist spirit that would define modernity.
💡 The Humanist Revolution
This is the Renaissance in full bloom—not the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, but its Northern expression in the 17th century. Here, humanism takes a different form:
- The individual emerges from the collective medieval consciousness
- Reason and observation replace dogma and tradition
- The everyday becomes sacred—Vermeer's domestic scenes elevate ordinary life to the sublime
- Light becomes metaphor—both literal illumination in painting and intellectual enlightenment in philosophy
📖 A Scholarly Exploration
Philippe Ratte's IN TERRA VIVENTIUM - Vermeer offers a rigorous examination of the artist's work within this broader cultural and philosophical context. This is not merely an art history book—it is an exploration of how visual culture reflects and shapes the profound transformations of an era.
The printed edition allows readers to fully appreciate the reproductions and engage deeply with the text, making it an essential addition to any serious library of art history and Renaissance studies.
🌍 Expanding Our Catalog Beyond the Medieval
This publication represents an important evolution for Metvox Publications. While we remain committed to our core focus on medieval and early modern history, Vermeer demonstrates our dedication to exploring the pivotal moments when one age gives way to another—when the medieval world's certainties dissolve into the Renaissance's questions, and those questions illuminate new possibilities for human understanding.