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The Goldfinch - Carel Fabritius (1654)

"The Goldfinch" is a small panel measuring just 33x18 cm, dated 1654, signed by Carel Fabritius and housed in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Against the backdrop of a bright white plastered wall, a goldfinch is tethered, with a chain, to a perch made of two semicircles of wood and a box of a gray-blue color. That’s it. And yet this image tells a story, indeed more than one. Beyond every virtuosic display and every illusory effect, Fabritius’s attention rests, almost with reverence, on that goldfinch which, life-size, occupies the scene as a protagonist and is no longer relegated to the background of a sacred or profane episode. His painting is essential, affectionate, and engaged, made more truthful by that soft shadow cast on the wall and the luminous reflections of the wood of the perch. While the goldfinch stands out against that slightly chipped white wall that would not seem out of place as a backdrop in a Vermeer painting, of whom, according to critical literature, Fabritius was—if not a master, at least a forerunner. The intimate and moving atmosphere of the composition makes that small, frightened, and captive bird seem to become the very symbol of fragility, as well as the cruelty of life. In the same year as the painting, 1654, on a warm October morning, an explosion at a powder magazine shakes all of Delft. The gigantic fire that follows completely destroys the northeastern quarter of the city, with its modest houses, grand mansions, and churches. Among the smoking ruins, more than five hundred dead are counted: among them is Carel Fabritius. In his workshop, consumed by flames, all the paintings he was working on were lost, along with his dreams and hopes. He was thirty-two years old then. [source senzadedica.blogspot.com]

Associated LP of 2003