Column: When life can pause

“Morning after morning Vermeer sits at his easel, as the world rages out there, the world where people are kneeling in subjection, where people are being branded with a hot iron.”

That’s a quote from journalist Teju Cole writing a recent review of the current art exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He is referring to Jan Vermeer, a Dutch artist in the mid-1600s who is renowned for paintings imbued with a feeling of tranquility and soft, indirect, and subtle lighting. Yet Vermeer painted during a turbulent time of wars, slavery, and terrors.