The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, and by Osip Mandelstam

The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, The Maurithuis, the Hague. 
(recently at the Frick in NYC, and seen by myself, at the De Young in San Francisco.  

 

What is remarkable, is that I read a poem by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown, in the new book which arrived yesterday, with a cover graced by this painting, which has just  caused unceasing lines of visitors and 30,000 new memberships at the Frick in New York.  The painting has now gone to Bologna, Italy. I saw it at the De Young in San Francisco, and while everyone was lining up to see Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl", this is the painting that captured my heart.  I kept a post card of it next to my desk, for more than a year, and then I had to buy Donna Tartt's book by the same title, as the painting is in the story; I am currently reading it and have yet to see how it plays a role...beyond falling into the bag of the little boy who is our primary subject in this lively tale expertly spun ad woven by the author. What all the reviews miss is that it is very much about New York City and the life lived there, and it is about the worst imagining; what if the 9/ll towers would be duplicated at the Met, and the story shows all the fallout and deaths but I suppose that would not make a good advertisement. 

 

In any event, the painter of this painting, or Carel Fabritius  had a tragic end at only age 32, in a disastrous explosion at the Delft Powder Magazine which destroyed the part of the city in which he lived.  He had previously studied for two years with Rembrandt, where he learned loose brush strokes, dark hues, and dramatic lighting, which he applied to mythological and Biblical scenes in his first 15 paintings.  At age 28, he moved to Delft, in 1650  and his interest turned to the local portrait scene and to the bird, the Gold finch, and in these canvasses, he used lighter colors and grew increasingly interested in illusionism and rendering of perspective and in the rendering of light, in particular. Here he interacted with the architectural painter, Gerrit Houckgeest and both paved the way for Vermeer to emerge in Delft.

 

Osip Mandelstam perhaps  saw the painting and like many poets, associates his poetry making with birds, and himself with this bird chained to its perch.  Dr Clarence Brown says the goldfinch was Mandelstam's favorite bird. Mandelstam  pens this poem in 1936 before he will die in imprisonment in a transit camp in the winter of 1938, having been sentenced to hard labor for "counterrevolutionary activities".  (Tartt must have read this poem?.  I was surprised to find it, this morning when browsing in the book which came in yesterday's post. Translated by Clarence Brown in 1965 when published by Princeton University Press, and penned two years before Mandelstam's  death: 

no. 324  My goldfinch, I'll cock my head;/together we'll look at the world: /the winter day jagged as stubble, is it rough to your eye as to mine?/ Tail, little black and yellow boat./Head dipped in color past the beak./Goldfinch, do you know you are a goldfinch,/do you know how much?/ What's the atmosphere back of his forehead.  It's black, red, yellow, white. /He keeps an eye out both ways. Now he's stopped/looking - he's flown from between them."   Voronezh. December 1936. 

 

 Looking up the painting in its home museum, the Mauritshuis, in the Hague, the painting was originally meant as a tromp l'oeil (to deceive/fool the eye) so that one thought when the painting was hung high, that a gold finch was actually perched there.  Gold finches were popular as house pets. My grandmother had a pet parakeet and canary, and had a great love of birds, and I remember fascinated by a cloth thrown over the cages at night, which would permit the birds to sleep.   This memory no doubt interplayed with my own interest in and love of birds.   A small gold finch used to migrate through Wisconsin, and I remember the delight of seeing this bird, which was truly gold, all yellow gold in color with black wings, a very tiny bird which would light on the bird feeder, definitely a song bird.