The Goldfinch

This Page and Energize talk us through their new site for The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum and the biggest little painting in the world

The Mauritshuis museum (mauritshuis.nl) in The Hague is home to a vast collection of art from the Golden Age of Dutch painting. It boasts work from the likes of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Breughel and Holbein, as well as one of just a handful of surviving paintings by Carel Fabritius: The Goldfinch (puttertje. mauritshuis.nl/en). Thrust into the limelight in recent years thanks to Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name, The Goldfinch is also the star of a new site from Energize (energize.nl) and This Page (thispage. amsterdam), telling the story of Fabritius’ little painting and the world it came from and encouraging people to visit the Mauritshuis.

net: What’s The Goldfinch and why is it such an important work of art?

RP: The Goldfinch is a painting by Carel Fabritius from 1654. And although it was painted centuries ago, it still is a source of inspiration to many. The world behind this apparently small painting is much larger than one would suspect. It is probably the most famous bird in the history of art and one of the best-loved paintings in the Mauritshuis.

The writer Donna Tartt described the work as a ‘tiny, stand-alone masterpiece’ and devoted a bestselling novel to it. The composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote a special flute concert about the little bird, calling it Il Gardellino (The Goldfinch). The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, which exhibited the painting in late 2016, described it as one of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

net: Can you tell us how you got involved with the project?