Is it still possible to imagine a brighter future?

(RNS) — Amidst wars, wildfires and ICE raids, we are woefully short these days of images of a better future for Earth and its inhabitants. Here then, in the summer of our discontent, are two transcendent portrayals of a world to be hoped for.

The first is one of Vermeer’s rare landscapes, his “View of Delft,” which Proust, after seeing it in the Mauritshuis in the Hague, called “the most beautiful picture in the world.” It shows sunlight playing across the Dutch town after a rainstorm — most importantly illuminating, between the two spires in the middle,  the roofs of the home and the church of the artist’s principal patrons.

In his fascinating new book, “ Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found ,” British art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon convincingly argues that Vermeer was part of a sect of liberal dissenters from Dutch Calvinism known as the Collegiants. Committed to tolerance for all religious communities, the Collegiants asked of members only an approval of the teachings of Jesus and accorded women in church full equality with men.

Vermeer created most of his paintings for Maria de Knuijt and Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, the married couple that led the sect in Delft. As…