A common and colourful bird with a pleasant song, the goldfinch was a popular pet, and could be taught simple tricks including lifting a thimble-sized bucket of water.

[5] The restoration removed the old yellow varnish and showed the original tones,[4] described by the art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger in 1859 as "pale wall" (mur blême) and "bright colour" (lumineuse couleur).

Pliny associated the bird with fertility, and the presence of a giant goldfinch next to a naked couple in The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by the earlier Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch perhaps refers to this belief.

[10] Nearly 500 Renaissance religious paintings, mainly by Italian artists, show the bird, including Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta (1490–1491), Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch (1506) and Piero della Francesca's Nativity (1470–1475)[12][a] In Medieval Christianity, the goldfinch's association with health symbolises the Redemption, and its habit of feeding on the seeds of spiky thistles, together with its red face, presaged the crucifixion of Jesus, where the bird supposedly became splattered with blood while attempting to remove the crown of thorns.

[15] The Goldfinch is a trompe-l'œil painting which uses artistic techniques to create the illusion of depth, notably through foreshortening of the head, but also by highlights on the rings and the bird's foot, and strong shadows on the plastered wall.

[2][11] The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon considered that the blend of colours in the diffuse shadow foreshadowed some of the techniques of the nineteenth-century French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists.

[8] Although several of Fabritius's contemporaries, including his master Rembrandt, used similar effects, the depiction of a single bird is a minimalist version of the genre, and the simplicity of the design combined with the perspective technique in The Goldfinch is unique among paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

[20] The art historian Wilhelm Martin (1876–1954) considered that The Goldfinch could only be compared with the Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets painted by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1504, more than a hundred years earlier.

[16] Fabritius's style differs from Rembrandt's typical chiaroscuro in his use of cool daylight, complex perspective,[21] and dark figures against a light background,[22] although he retains some of his master's techniques such as using the handle end of the brush to scratch lines through thick paint.

His father and his brothers Barent and Johannes were painters and, although not formally trained in art, Fabritius's ability gained him a place at Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam.

[16] Fabritius died aged 32, caught in the explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine on October 12, 1654, which killed at least 100 people and destroyed a quarter of the city,[24] including his studio and many of his paintings.

[21] Vermeer, who also lived in Delft, in particular used similar pale, worn walls lit by bright sunlight,[4] and it has been suggested that he was Fabritius's student, although there is no real evidence for this claim.

Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who had helped to restore the reputation of Vermeer,[19] found it in the collection of former Dutch army officer and collector Chevalier Joseph-Guillaume-Jean Camberlyn in Brussels.

He takes the Fabritius painting, part of a Dutch Golden Age exhibition, with him as he escapes the building, and much of the rest of the book is based around his attempts to hide the picture, its theft and eventual return.

In reality, the painting has never been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum, although coincidentally an exhibition including The Goldfinch opened at New York's Frick Collection on the day of the novel's publication.

[40] The 2013–2014 Frick exhibition was part of a world tour of selected Golden Age paintings from the Mauritshuis during its two-year closure for a £25M renovation of the gallery,[39] with previous showings in Tokyo, Kobe, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York, and finishing with a visit to Bologna.

[41][43] Tartt's book was adapted as a 2019 film produced by Warner Bros and Amazon Studios,[44] directed by John Crowley,[45] and starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman.