Bestselling novelist Siri Hustvedt's inspired collection of essays on painting is now available in paperback. In <i>Mysteries of the Rectangle</i>, Hustvedt concentrates her narrative gifts on the works of such masters as Francisco Goya, Jan Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin, Gerhard Richter, and Joan Mitchell. Through her own personal experiences, Hustvedt is able to reveal things hidden until now in plain sight: an egglike detail in Vermeer's <i>Woman with a Pearl Necklace</i> and the many hidden self-portraits in Goya's series of drawings, <i>Los Caprichos</i>, as well as in his famous painting <i>The Third of May</i>. Most importantly, these essays exhibit the passion, thrill, and sheer pleasure of bewilderment a work of art can produceif you simply take the time to look.