THUNDERCLAP
LAURA CUMMING
Chatto, 272pp, £25
In 1654, a gunpowder explosion destroyed central Delft and the painter Carel Fabritius died in the rubble of his studio. Only 12 known paintings by Fabritius survive, the best known of them his depiction of a goldfinch. But art critic Laura Cumming, in a book acclaimed across the board, takes his intriguing ‘View of Delft’, with its bendy perspectives, as the starting point for a study encompassing not only Fabritius himself but her late father, James Cumming, an artist who loved Netherlandish painting, and the art and culture of the Dutch golden age.
In the Guardian, Kathryn Hughes loved the way that although ‘Cumming cannot in truth show us new definitive facts about Fabritius, she brings him out of the shadows, making us see why he is so much more than the missing link in someone else's story.’
The ’s Stuart Kelly was also impressed. ‘Where Cumming truly excels is in the
