The four forms of the goldfinch

We cannot imagine life without birds. They are a symbol of freedom, beauty, and love. But birds are also pets, food, or hunting trophies. In the exhibition BIRDS – Curated by The Goldfinch & Simon Schama, we ask ourselves how it is possible that we both admire and confine birds. And what does our bond with birds say about how we treat nature? The inspiration for the BIRDS exhibition at the Mauritshuis, running until June 7, 2026, is that *The Goldfinch* by Carel Fabritius was purchased 130 years ago, on February 27, 1896, by Abraham Bredius (Director of the Mauritshuis) at the auction of the Martinet collection at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. *The Goldfinch* appears four times in this blog: as a bird, as a painting, as a book, and as a film. Will you fly along with the goldfinch?

The Goldfinch (bird)

The European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) is a songbird belonging to the finch family. The goldfinch's native range covers a large part of Europe, parts of North Africa, and western Asia. Beyond this, the goldfinch has been introduced to Australia, New Zealand, North and South America, and South Africa. The goldfinch is a relatively slender finch with distinctive head markings. Its red face is framed by a broad white band, while the back of the head is black. A broad yellow band runs lengthwise across the black wings. Furthermore, the plumage is light brown on the back and flanks, white on the underside, and black on the tail. In the Western world, the goldfinch has long been kept as a cage bird. Some people draw their own water from a water reservoir using a small bucket. This is how the goldfinch got its Dutch name.

Netherlands (2013): From the series Birds – Goldfinch.

The goldfinch is a slenderly built finch with a pointed beak and a deeply forked tail. An adult bird has a body length of 11,5 to 12,5 centimeters and a wingspan of 21 to 25 centimeters. The weight varies between 14 and 19 grams. An adult goldfinch has a red mask and a dark bridle stripe. Behind this red mask, in most subspecies, runs a broad white band from the ear region to the chin. Behind this is another black band, running from above the shoulders to the crown. The wings are predominantly black. The flight feathers have white tips and a large yellow spot in the middle. When the goldfinch spreads its wings, a broad yellow wing stripe is visible. The tail feathers are also black and have a white tip. On the underside, the plumage is predominantly white. The upper side and breast of the goldfinch are yellowish-brown in winter plumage and greyer and lighter in color in summer plumage. The summer plumage appears after the feather tips have worn down. The upperparts and the breast become greyer and lighter in colour, and the tips of the flight and tail feathers show less white. The light patch at the back of the neck is also whiter. The bill is entirely white in summer plumage, but in winter plumage it develops a dark-coloured tip.

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The European goldfinch is native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The eastern goldfinch is a separate species that occurs in Central Asia, adjacent to the distribution area. The habitats of these species are located in open, lightly wooded areas. In Europe, these include gardens, parks, and forest edges. In a large part of its range, the goldfinch is a resident bird, but in a large part of Asia, it migrates annually between cold and milder regions. As early as the 19th century, the goldfinch was introduced to Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands, Uruguay, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The goldfinch has further expanded its habitat in many parts of the world.

The Goldfinch (painting)

The Goldfinch is a painting by the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius from 1654. It has been part of the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1896. Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch was purchased 130 years ago, on February 27, 1896, by Abraham Bredius (director of the Mauritshuis) at the auction of the Martinet collection at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.

The Netherlands (2004): Carel Fabritius.

The small panel depicts a goldfinch sitting on a semicircular bar in front of its feeding bowl, to which it is chained by a small chain. A piece of plaster has chipped off the white wall to its right. A few years earlier, Jan Weenix had created a painting that closely resembles it at first glance, in this case featuring a dead partridge hanging from a nail, also against a white-plastered wall. With this, he was a pioneer of a genre that quickly became popular: the hunting still life in trompe-l'oeil. Fabritius went a step further: he decided to paint a lifelike, live bird, thus creating a unique painting in Dutch art of the Golden Age.

Some art historians view Jacob de Gheyn's accurate observations of insects, frogs, and mice as precursors to Fabritius's panel. Like the goldfinch, the creatures cast a diffuse shadow on a cream-colored background. The difference is that Fabritius evoked a realistic scene with a few simple additions, whereas Jacob de Gheyn isolated the animals from their surroundings. The works of Weenix and Fabritius have also been compared to some paintings by Jacopo de' Barbari, an Italian artist from around 1500 who was active in the Southern Netherlands at the end of his life, but there is no indication that they were familiar with his work.

There has already been much speculation regarding the artist's precise intention. Most art historians agree that the painting indeed falls within the tradition of trompe-l'oeil, but exactly how it functioned and in what context it was displayed remains a mystery, even after an exhaustive technical analysis.

The Netherlands (2014): The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) from 1654.

The Goldfinch (novel)

The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. The original English title of the book is The Goldfinch. The title refers to The Goldfinch, a small painting from 1654 by the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, which plays an important role in the story. The world premiere of the book was in 2013 in the Dutch translation, a month earlier than the English original. The book won the American Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014.

The author worked on the book, which spans over 900 pages, for ten years. In addition to the painting, Tartt incorporated further Dutch elements into her book, which is set primarily in New York. The main character who tells his story is named Theo Decker. He is from New York, but the crucial moments at the end of the story take place in Amsterdam. Tartt gives quite a few New York families Dutch names, such as Decker, Van der Pleyn, and De Peyster, and makes numerous references to Dutch painters, including Fabritius, Rembrandt, Hals, and Van Gogh.

Story

The protagonist, Theo Decker, is 13 years old when he visits an exhibition of Dutch Golden Age painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. His father had abandoned them a few months earlier. During their visit to the museum, a terrorist attack takes place there, killing his mother and many others. Many people are also injured, including a girl his age whom he had noticed earlier. In the confusion and chaos following the attack, he takes a small painting. He hides it and is constantly afraid that the police will catch and arrest him; he never brings himself to return it. For years, he is gripped by the fear of losing the valuable object. Eventually, that is exactly what happens. After this first theft, things go from bad to worse for him as a teenager and young adult: he skips school with a friend, Boris, uses alcohol, medication, and drugs, starts dealing drugs, and commits scams, deceit, and fraud. Later, through his friend Boris, Theo ends up in the art underworld. During an attempt to retrieve the small painting in Amsterdam, he shoots two dangerous criminals dead. The operation fails when a third person makes off with the painting. Boris knows the art thieves and has the case reported to the police. They do indeed find the small painting at the indicated location in Frankfurt, and, surprisingly, a whole series of other stolen art objects. Theo receives the majority of all the rewards offered from his friend, thereby making up for all his fraud. The author has her protagonist make a casual comparison with Fyodor Dostoevsky's book *The Idiot*. In that book, the protagonist is an upright man, but his actions cause much misfortune. Here, it is exactly the opposite.

The Goldfinch (film)

The Goldfinch is a 2019 American film directed by John Crowley, starring Ansel Elgort and Oakes Fegley, based on the book The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Story

When Theo Dekker is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother, his attention is drawn to the painting *The Goldfinch*. His mother briefly goes to another room while Theo stays with the painting. Then an attack takes place. Theo is one of the few survivors of the attack. Amidst all the commotion, he also takes the painting of the Goldfinch with him. Because Theo's mother died in the attack and his father has not lived with them for a very long time, Theo needs to be taken in by a foster family. For the time being, he is allowed to live with the family of a friend of his. At a certain point, his father suddenly shows up on the doorstep, and he has to move in with him. There, he becomes friends with a Russian boy named Boris. During a party for the two of them, Theo shows the painting to Boris. When his father suddenly dies, Theo flees from his stepmother, with whom he does not get along. Years later, he loses what he believes to be the painting. He then attempts suicide but is saved by Boris, who confesses that he swapped the painting years ago. But Boris has also lost the painting. However, he does know where the painting is, and together they are going to retrieve it.

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Golden Goldfinch

PostNL will issue the gold stamp The Goldfinch on March 30, 2026. This stamp, made of 24-karat gold, depicts The Goldfinch, a world-famous painting by Carel Fabritius, created in 1654. It can be admired in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Edition: 1000 stamps.

The stamp 'Het goldfinch' is being issued on the occasion of BIRDS Curated by The Goldfinch & Simon Schama, an exhibition centered on 'Het goldfinch' at the Mauritshuis from February 12 to June 7, exploring the complex relationship between bird and human. 'Het goldfinch' is a nickname for the thistlefinch, so named because it can peck seeds from thistles with its relatively long beak. It is a common songbird of about 12 centimeters with a yellow stripe on its black wings and a red mask around the eyes and beak. Carel Fabritius painted the little bird in oil on a small panel (33,5 x 22,8 cm) with loose, visible brushstrokes, magnificent in its simplicity.

The stamp *Het Goldtertje* was designed by Frank Janse. That was not easy, says Janse, even though he has extensive experience making stamps with silver and gold. 'It is not easy to translate a work by an old master like *Het Goldtertje* onto a gold stamp in a dignified manner. I believe that the image of a masterpiece should speak for itself as much as possible, and in this case, the trompe l'oeil effect of the painting is lost due to the gold. There is no longer any question of a plastered wall against which the little bird seems to detach. Fortunately, we also have the box and the certificate on which the painting can be depicted in its full individuality. I looked at it in all sorts of ways and ultimately decided that it is above all about the little bird. In the cropped image I created, it therefore receives all the attention. *Het Goldtertje* is printed in full colour. The only thing I added is that I had some relief applied in the gold on the stick on which the goldfinch is sitting. That way, the stick seems to come forward slightly, and the optical illusion that he is sitting on that stick becomes a bit bigger after all.

What remains if you want to make the most full use of the image is the typography. 'I felt that the lettering had to serve the painting to the fullest extent. That is why I chose the Amster (light and light italic) by PampaType, designed by the Chilean designer Francesco Gálvez. Although the Amster was designed in 2014, it is a classic font and it also complements the typeface used by the Mauritshuis beautifully.'

Frank Janse (Vlissingen, 1967) graduated as a graphic designer from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2001. Commissioned by PostNL, he previously designed various luxury storage systems and many diverse stamps, from the "Experience Nature" series in the years 2018–2023 to the Snoopy 75th Anniversary stamp. The goldfinch with 24-karat gold is not his first stamp featuring a painting from the Mauritshuis. In 2023, he designed the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" stamp.

Source: PostNL press release.