The Goldfinch (painting)

The Goldfinch is an oil painting on panel measuring , in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The panel on which it is painted is thick, which is atypically deep for a small painting, and indicates that it may have formerly been part of a larger piece of wood. Evidence for this is the remains of a wooden pin, suggesting the original boards had been joined with dowels and glue. Before it was framed, the painting had a black border onto which a gilded frame was later fixed with ten equally spaced nails. The nails did not reach the back of the panel, so there is no evidence of a backing to the picture. The frame was subsequently removed, leaving only a residual line of a greenish copper compound from the gilt. Fabritius then extended the white background pigment to the right edge, repainted his signature, and added the lower perch. Finally, the remaining black edges were overpainted with white. There is a small red triangle on the back of the panel, added in 1938 as the threat of a European war loomed. This symbol was used to indicate that a work was irreplaceable. During conservation, it was realised that the surface of the painting had numerous small dents that must have been formed when the paint was still not fully dried, since there was no cracking. It is possible that the slight damage was caused by the explosion that killed its creator. The restoration removed the old yellow varnish and showed the original tones, ==The subject==

(Carduelis carduelis)|thumb|upright=0.75|alt=A perched bird The painting shows a life-size European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) on top of a feeder—a blue container with a lid, enclosed by two wooden half-rings fixed to the wall. The bird is perched on the upper ring, to which its leg is attached by a fine chain. As a colourful species with a pleasant twittering song, and an associated belief that it brought health and good fortune, Pliny the Elder recorded that it could be taught to do tricks, The goldfinch frequently appears in paintings, not just for its colourful appearance but also for its symbolic meanings. Pliny associated the bird with fertility, and the presence of a giant goldfinch next to a naked couple in The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by the earlier Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch perhaps refers to this belief. In Medieval Christianity, the goldfinch's association with health symbolises the Redemption, and its habit of feeding on the seeds of spiky thistles, together with its red face, presaged the crucifixion of Jesus, where the bird supposedly became splattered with blood while attempting to remove the crown of thorns. Many of these devotional paintings were created in the middle of the 14th century while the Black Death pandemic gripped Europe. The goldfinch in art File:Chained goldfinch.jpg|Goldfinch with chain and "bucket". Anonymous Dutch grisaille painting on glass 1650–1675|alt=bird with chain and birdhouse File:Abraham_Mignon_-_Fruit_Still-Life_with_Squirrel_and_Goldfinch_-_WGA15666.jpg|Fruit Still-Life with Squirrel and Goldfinch by Abraham Mignon () shows the water-drawing behaviour of the bird.|alt=heap of fruit with a squirrel and a bird File:Gerard Dou - A Girl in a Window with a Bunch of Grapes.jpg|alt=A girl in a window with a bunch of grapes|A Girl in a Window with a Bunch of Grapes (1662) by Gerrit Dou also depicts this trick File:Jan Steen Vrolijke huisgezin.xcfmockup.jpg|A mock-up of The Happy Family by Jan Steen (1668) with The Goldfinch (outlined in white) on the window jamb to show how it might have been displayed. File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolutioncrop.jpg|alt=A giant bird and a naked couple|Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (1495–1505) by Hieronymus Bosch showing a giant goldfinch symbolising fertility File:Raffaello Sanzio - Madonna del Cardellino - Google Art Project.jpg|alt= Woman in Medieval dress with two small children and a goldfinch|Madonna of the Goldfinch (1505–1506) by Raphael File:Leonardo da Vinci attributed - Madonna Litta.jpg|alt= Woman in Medieval dress with two small children and a goldfinch|Madonna Litta (mid-1490s) by Leonardo da Vinci File:Piero della Francesca - Nativity - WGA17620.jpg|alt= a nativity scene|The Nativity (1470–1475) by Piero della Francesca. The goldfinch is in the shrub to the left of the foot of the leftmost musician. File:William Hogarth 047.jpg|alt=four children in eighteenth-century clothes|The Graham Children (1742) by William Hogarth ==Style==

The Goldfinch is a painting which uses artistic techniques to create the illusion of depth, notably through foreshortening of the head, but also by highlights on the rings and the bird's foot, and strong shadows on the plastered wall. The viewpoint seems to be from slightly below the bird, suggesting it was intended to be mounted in an elevated position. The lack of a frame initially also suggests the painting may have been mounted to look realistic, and may have been part of a larger assemblage of illusionary paintings. Fabritius had previously experimented with with the realistic nail that appears to be protruding from his 1649 Portrait of Abraham de Potter. The art historian Wilhelm Martin (1876–1954) considered that The Goldfinch could only be compared with the Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets painted by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1504, more than a hundred years earlier. The bird itself was created with broad brush strokes, with only minor later corrections to its outline, while details, including the chain, were added with more precision. and dark figures against a light background. He retains some of his master's techniques, such as using the handle end of the brush to scratch lines through thick paint, File:Jacopo de' Barbari 001.jpg|alt=A dead bird and two leather gloves hanging on a wall|Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets (1504) by Jacopo de' Barbari File:Jacopo de' Barbari - Un sparviero.jpg|alt= a bird of prey|A Sparrowhawk (1510s, showing a Eurasian sparrowhawk) by de' Barbari File:Carel Fabritius 005.jpg|alt= Dutch silk merchant|Portrait of Abraham de Potter (1649) by Fabritius File:Christus_carthusian.jpg|alt=Carthusian monk|Portrait of a Carthusian by Petrus Christus (1446) with a fly apparently on the frame File:FabritiusViewOfDelft.jpg|alt=painting of a 17th-century city|A View of Delft (between 1642 and 1654) by Fabritius ==Artist==

Carel Pietersz Fabritius was born in 1622 in Middenbeemster in the Dutch Republic. Initially he worked as a carpenter. His father and his brothers Barent and Johannes were painters and, although not formally trained in art, Fabritius's ability gained him a place at Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam. The move to Amsterdam took place in 1641, the same year Fabritius married his first wife, who came from a well-to-do family. including his studio and many of his paintings. Few of his works are known to have survived. The Goldfinch was painted in the year Fabritius died. Fabritius's works were well regarded by his contemporaries, and his style influenced other notable Dutch painters of the period, including Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte and Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer, who also lived in Delft, in particular used similar pale, worn walls lit by bright sunlight, and it has been suggested that he was Fabritius's student, although there is no real evidence for this claim. ==Provenance==

between 1853 and 1869|alt=Middle-aged man in coat The Goldfinch was lost and unknown for more than two centuries before it first came to light in 1859. Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who had helped to restore the reputation of Vermeer, found it in Brussels within the collection of former Dutch army officer and collector Chevalier Joseph-Guillaume-Jean Camberlyn. Thoré-Bürger may have temporarily borrowed the painting and cleaned it, three years after its first public exhibition in Paris in 1866. for 5,500 francs at the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris on 5December 1892, and later purchased for the Mauritshuis by its curator and art collector Abraham Bredius for 6,200 francs at the sale of the Émile Martinet collection, also at Hôtel Drouot, on 27 February 1896. As well as The Goldfinch, Martinet's collection included works attributed to other renowned artists such as Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Jan Steen, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and La Pythonisse, a work tentatively attributed to Fabritius's brother, Barent. The painting is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Its popularity was enhanced by a professional photograph of the work by Vinkenbos and Dewald, and an etching by Philip Zilcken, both created in its year of purchase. ==Cultural references and exhibitions==

The Goldfinch plays a central role in the 2013 eponymous novel by American author Donna Tartt. The novel's protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore "Theo" Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which his mother dies. He takes the Fabritius painting, part of a Dutch Golden Age exhibition, with him as he escapes the building, and much of the rest of the book is based around his attempts to hide the picture. The book won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was a commercial success with sales reaching nearly 1.5 million soon after the award. The book's cover is itself a , the painting visible through an illusionary tear in the paper. In reality, the painting has never been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum, although coincidentally an exhibition including The Goldfinch opened at New York's Frick Collection on the day of the novel's publication. An estimated 200,000–235,000 people attended the Frick exhibition, despite freezing temperatures, and 13,000 people joined the museum, quadrupling its subscription base. The Tokyo exhibition was attended by a million people, making it the most visited such event of the year. Prior to the publicity from the release of Tartt's novel, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring had typically been highlighted as the main attraction of the exhibition. Tartt's book was adapted as a 2019 film produced by Warner Bros and Amazon Studios, directed by John Crowley, and starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman. Other cultural references to The Goldfinch include the American artist Helen Frankenthaler's 1960 abstract expressionist interpretation of the 1654 painting titled the Fabritius Bird, and the American poet Morri Creech's 2010 poem "Goldfinch", which includes the line "You stare / from a modest heaven we don't share". The Goldfinch was one of eight Mauritshuis masterpieces depicted on a set of €1.00 stamps issued in 2014 by the Dutch postal service, PostNL, to mark the reopening of the museum. It also featured in a 2004 set of stamps showing works by Fabritius. The Mauritshuis ran an exhibition from 12 February to 7 June 2026 titled BIRDS – Curated by The Goldfinch & Simon Schama; Sir Simon Schama is an English professor, art historian and author of Birds: The Goldfinch, Birds, Art, and Us, co-edited with Martine Gosselink, the General Director of the Mauritshuis. In addition to The Goldfinch, the exhibition also included works by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Tracey Emin, Albrecht Dürer and Vincent Van Gogh. The exhibition was reviewed in The Observer by Laura Cumming, its art critic and author of Thunderclap, which included the Delft explosion and the works of Fabritius and other Dutch Golden Age artists. She finished her comments with ''The beauty of Fabritius's masterpiece is in exact tension with its poignancy: the enigmatic bird, so gentle and solitary, with its flash of golden wing, its alert eye and yearning body, perhaps still full of hope, held here before you as a fellow being, captive, no longer on the wing. It is the greatest painting of a bird in all art.'' ==Notes==