The Chained Goldfinch

Fabritius is generally considered Rembrandt's most gifted pupil and a painter of outstanding originality and distinction, but he died tragically young in the explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine, leaving only a tiny body of work. Of all Rembrandt's pupils, Fabritius was the only one to develop his own artistic style. Fabritius' portraits feature delicately lit subjects against light-colored, textured backgrounds. He became interested in the technical aspects of painting. He used cool color harmonies to create shape in a luminous style of painting.
This very small painting on a panel measuring 13"x 9" is of a chained golfinch and one of only a handful of paintings to survive down the ages. Against a luminous, whitewashed wall—a hallmark of the Delft school but here marked by crumbling plasterwork and patches of scumbled, slate-blue priming—Fabritius paints to scale a common goldfinch tethered by a delicate metal chain. The artist's name and the date at the lower edge appear not painted but incised into the same blue-gray ground, and the color is repeated in the square feedbox at center, in cast shadows, in underpainting on the circular wooden rungs, and in the bird's soft down. The composition is elegant in its spare simplicity: Only the goldfinch and its shadow offset the subtle balance of hard edges and swagging curves that create its perfect symmetry.

The slope of the box, the slanted shade, and the steep angle at which we see the bird suggest that Fabritius intended his small painting to be hung high and viewed at a slight distance, the vantage point at which its captured illusion of a tiny creature peering down from its perch is most convincing. The painter draws us near, however, with the dazzling virtuosity of his brushwork. Strokes of paint remain perceptible on the surface and range from veils of thin pigment and soft swirls of darkened reds to crusted threads of glistening white impasto.

Apparently, the goldfinch was a favorite pet in Dutch homes and is often seen depicted in Dutch paintings. The goldfinch had also figured in countless devotional images as a symbol of death and resurrection, its small spot of red plumage an allusion to Christ's passion.
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