Business is booming for “The Goldfinch,” and it goes beyond the bestselling novel and Oscar-bait movie that opened in theaters Friday.
Centuries before author Donna Tartt came up with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Goldfinch” was already a stunning if little known painting by a forgotten 17th century Dutch artist named Carel Fabritius. Now, 365 years after his tragic death at the age of 32, Fabritius and his creation — which depicts a tiny yellow-feathered bird tethered to its perch — are hotter than ever.
The work hangs at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, about 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam. Aided by the book’s fame — the painting graces the cover and plays a pivotal role in the narrative — it now ranks as a star attraction.
At the Mauritshuis, where “The Goldfinch” competes with Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (also the inspiration for a book and movie) for top billing as a pop-culture phenom, 40 or so “Goldfinch”-themed items are for sale in the gift shop. Prior to the book’s 2013 publication, there was only a jigsaw puzzle. These days there are refrigerator magnets, key fobs and tins of Stroopwafel adorned with the little bird, as well as a reproduction printed on canvas and selling for $165.
“Lots of Americans come here and want to see it,” Ariane van Suchtelen, the museum’s curator, told The Post. “Donna Tartt and the book have drawn a lot of attention to the artist.”
Fabritius had practiced carpentry before studying with Rembrandt at the master’s studio in Amsterdam. According to van Suchtelen, “The Goldfinch,” which measures just over 13 inches tall by 9 inches wide, may have been intended as a decorative panel for a box.
Born in the small Holland town of Middenbeemster, Fabritius was the son of a school teacher who painted as a hobby. Van Suchtelen said that young Carel was tutored by his father before arriving in Amsterdam, at around age 14, to study with Rembrandt at the master’s home. There, according to van Suchtelen, “[Fabritius] learned about light and the ability to capture emotions while using them to tell a story.”
Fabritius married and had children, but his wife and offspring died of unknown causes, causing the brokenhearted painter to move back home with his parents. Then, in 1650, at the age of 28, he remarried and relocated to his new bride’s hometown of Delft.
There, Fabritius came into his own as an artist, even earning a commission to paint wall murals. Among the well-respected works he created around this time are the richly detailed “The Gate Guard/The Sentry” and a portrait of silk merchant Abraham De Potter, which delicately parses strands of thinning hair atop the man’s head.
According to DailyArtMagazine.com, a contemporary described Fabritius as “quick and sure in matters of perspective as well as naturalistic coloring . . . no one has yet equaled him.”
Margaret Iacono, associate research curator of The Frick Collection art museum in New York City, concurs: “He’s wonderful in his handling of light and . . . brings emotional depth to his paintings. That can be learned, and he trained under a master, but in his work there is also a quality that comes from being a fabulous artist.”
Fabritius was 32 years old when he completed “The Goldfinch,” but it would be one of his last works.
The painting is dated 1654, which coincides with the year of a tragic incident known as the “Delft Thunderclap.”
At the time, not long after the Eighty Years War, the Dutch army stashed surplus gunpowder in Delft, with some 40 tons of the explosive material kept in an old convent.
For unknown reasons, the barrels’ incendiary contents exploded on the morning of Oct. 12, 1654 — a blast loud enough to be heard 93 miles away. It destroyed one-third of the city, including around 200 houses.
So intense was the explosion that, according to the New Netherland Institute, “some believed that it was the end of the world, with the Gates of Hell opening and God’s wrath raining down on the town.”
Miraculously, because many townspeople were attending a fair in The Hague, only 22 perished. But among those who died was Fabritius. Many of his works were also obliterated.
Today, just 12 paintings definitively attributed to Fabritius remain in existence. Among them, of course, is “The Goldfinch.” It’s not known where the painting was at the time of the explosion.
But by the 19th century it had wound up in the possession of a Danish nobleman who lived in Brussels. That’s where Fabritius’ largely forgotten unknown painting was discovered by the French art adviser Theophile Torre. He was immediately possessed by the work.
“Torre wrote in letters that he was determined to have ‘The Goldfinch,’ ” said van Suchtelen. He was persuasive enough that “when the nobleman died, Torre received the painting.”
Torre went on to display it in a successful exhibition alongside work by Vermeer, but he still preferred to have the painting all to himself.
So devout was he, according to van Suchtelen, that Torre spent the last moments of his life staring at “The Goldfinch.”
In 1896, the Mauritshuis museum bought the painting at auction.
Nowdays, said Robert Simon, a Manhattan dealer who specializes in old-master paintings, “It’s become so famous that you’d have to figure it would sell for at least a couple hundred million. It’s such an evocative work that captures the imagination of so many people.”
Among them is Donna Tartt, the reclusive author who has published just three novels in her 27-year-long career, which was launched with the beloved “The Secret History.”
Tartt has said, however, that when she first started working on her third novel, she planned to center the narrative around a different painting — one by the German portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger.
But during a trip to Amsterdam, she told the Chicago Tribune, she first saw a reproduction of “The Goldfinch” at Christie’s. “I had a strong emotional connection with the image from the very first.”
(Warning: Major “Goldfinch” spoilers ahead.)
Her novel opens with a Manhattan teenager named Theo Decker (Ansel Elgort) who happens to be visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother (Nicole Kidman). They are there expressly to see “The Goldfinch” when a terrible explosion — set off by terrorists, not a careless person around a barrel of gunpowder — kills his mother.
In the midst of the ensuing mayhem, Theo steals the painting and for years keeps it carefully wrapped and hidden away, taking it with him through misadventures in Las Vegas and the seedier side of the Manhattan antiques trade as he grows into a young man.
The book was published in October 2013 and immediately became a must-read sensation.
The Frick lucked out, as it had arranged for a showing of the painting, on loan from the Mauritshuis as part of a larger exhibition of Dutch art, that began the same month as the book’s release. Incredibly, the timing was simply coincidental.
“It was the most popular exhibition we ever did. There were over 200,000 visitors, which is enormous,” said Frick curator Iacono. “We had book clubs coming through. It was phenomenal because the painting brought in a different segment [of the public than usual].”
Tartt herself even managed multiple low-profile visits.
“She was impressed by the opportunity to see ‘The Goldfinch’ again,” Iacono recalled of the author. “I took a number of celebrities through the show but she preferred to come on her own.”
Iacono is not surprised by the widespread fascination with the painting.
“It has a wistful quality and you can see everything that went into it,” she said. “It’s very approachable and you don’t need to know the backstory to understand what is going on. A little bird like that, with a delicate chain around his foot, is a narrative that everyone can relate to.
“Plus the brushwork is so lovely. You can almost see the downiness of his feathers,” she added, emphasizing Fabritius’ signature fine detail.
There are two sour notes regarding the intersection of the painting, the book and the new movie.
Tartt was not involved in the production of the film, nor is she doing any press for it. As Page Six has reported, the author fired her longtime book agent, Amanda “Binky” Urban, after receiving $3 million for the film rights — but no producer credit and no opportunity to write the script.
And movie audiences won’t see the real “Goldfinch.” According to Maurithshuis museum press representative Rene Timmermans, “It has to do with the safety of the painting, which is part of the permanent collection of the museum. We could not let it be used in the movie.”
But researchers at the Mauritshuis used 3-D technology to re-create the painting and even managed to mimic the visible brushstrokes.
While museum director Dr. Emilie Gordenker told the Sunday Telegraph that the original painting has “slightly more depth and resonance to it,” she deemed the camera-ready reproduction as being “very, very close.”
Ahead of the movie’s release, staffers at Mauritshuis fortified supplies in the gift shop, and museum press officer Boris de Munnick is bracing for a crush of “Goldfinch” fans.
And the little painting that survived its creator’s tragedy might just surpass its Mauritshuis neighbor — and Hollywood compatriot — in popularity.
“Right now our Mona Lisa is ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring,’ ” de Munnick said. “But ‘The Goldfinch’ is really trying to take over.”