ごしきひわ

Fabritius signed and dated this small panel in 1654, and that date carries a shock. On the 12th of October that year a gunpowder store blew up in Delft, levelling a third of the town and killing him at 32. This life-sized goldfinch may have been in his studio when it happened. It was never meant to hang as a picture in the way we see it now. It was probably part of something practical, a window jamb or a little protective cover, painted so convincingly that on a plastered wall the eye takes the bird for real. See how loosely the paint is laid on up close, and how the light catches the fine chain that tethers the bird to its feeding box. The Dutch called this bird a puttertje, a little water-drawer, for its trick of hauling up water with a tiny bucket on a chain.