This idiosyncratic and entertaining history uses five paintings by Johannes Vermeer and two additional artifacts to explore nascent global trade. Small details in the canvases—the officer’s hat in Officer and Laughing Girl, the globe resting on a cabinet in the background of The Geographer, the silver coins about to be weighed in Woman Holding a Balance—act as “doors,” in Brook’s phrasing, that open onto the seventeenth century.