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The Secret History Behind The Goldfinch Painting
The Golden Age’s Goldfinch and the glory of Dutch art
“Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom,” she says after taking a step back, drawing mechanical eyes to her rain-stippled coat. Still lifes hanging before her, the noble subjects of frigid white light, and for tourists filing in as blood cells to a vein. The cavernous dome exhaling both comfort and cold, echoes of steps floating into archaic air. She traces her fingers just inches from the fruit, confiding to him: “the little speck of rot.”
And there it is. Pomegranates painted at the peak of their ripeness, a dribble of juice signalling the edge of decay. Pearls hanging delicately like cherries from a tree, framing her parted lips, her cold, perceptive gaze. The bloodshot eyes of tired surgeons, red noses, flesh torn. “They really knew how to work this edge, the Dutch painters — ripeness sliding into rot.”
The Dutch invented the microscope. “They were jewellers, grinders of lenses.” They painted as a poet picks words, as a pointillist dots the canvas: “even the tiniest things mean something.” Flyspeck blushing the skin of an apple, a wilted petal and its tributaries of veins. It’s a message from the artist, from the reverberations of history: all rivers run dry; all baked bread goes stale.
