Vermeer, a Dutch painter, was born in Delft in 1632 and died there in 1675. His work is far more famous now than when he was alive. One of his most notable paintings is Girl with a Pearl Earring. Several of his paintings are used in Vermeer’s Hat to demonstrate his use of paintings as puzzles that open onto the wider world, showing viewers who care to look that the act of viewing artwork is an active endeavor. Through his paintings, viewers can glean the beginnings of globalization in the seventeenth century.