In this richly imagined novel based on the life of seventeenth-century painter, Johannes Vermeer, Barbara Shoup evokes the artist's world through the eyes of his favorite daughter. Willful, dreamy, not-beautiful Carelina Vermeer is a trial to her wealthy Grandmother Thins, whose efforts to make her into a proper young lady are a constant source of tension in a large, loving, but quarrelsome family. Then, early one morning, she follows her sister to a house on the harbor where he is preparing to paint his masterpiece, "e;View of Delft,"e; and her real life begins.