Thunderclap: A memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death
by Laura Cummings
Chatto and Windus £12.99

[[{"fid":"61491","view_mode":"inlineleft","fields":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineleft","data-delta":"1"}}]]THE thunderclap of the title was a gunpowder explosion on October 12 1654, which devastated the city of Delft killing over a hundred and leaving thousands injured. Among the dead was Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt van Rijn’s most promising apprentice.

Fabritius holds a special fascination for Laura Cummings as does his View of Delft, with a Musical Instrument Seller’s Stall, painted two years before his death (at the National Gallery, London): “for pictures can shore you up, remind you of who you are and what you stand for.”

Cummings, the insightful art critic of the Guardian, employs anecdote, fascinating historical detail and personal memories to weave a superb narrative, one that becomes a spellbinding vademecum to Dutch art of the time, its social and political context, and a plethora of actors across the ages including Rembrandt and the French socialist art critic and revolutionary Theophile Thore-Burger who revived Vermeer and catalogued Fabritius among many others.