Johannes Vermeer, the painter of light and silence, portrayed a golden era that he actually never met. Because his country, Holland, was at war against England and France for more than fifty years; because his city, Delft, was devastated by plagues during the seventeenth century; and because he lived in a home where domestic violence was even a regular issue. So, how could Vermeer create his peaceful paintings in the midst of this problematic scenario? This is the "lie" (certainly pious) that Michael Taylor reveals in this book based on the premise that the artists use art to transform their reality according to their own interior utopia.