A bright little songbird has just fluttered from the walls of the Mauritshuis gallery in Holland into the world of the literary bestseller. You can spot it right now, peeping watchfully out from a trompe l’oeil tear in the dust jacket of Donna Tartt’s latest book. The Goldfinch takes as its symbolic focus the beguiling little portrait of its eponymous pet songbird that, painted by the 17th-century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, is now part of the royal collection in The Hague.
“This is the one I was talking about,” the protagonist’s mother cries, drawing so abruptly to a halt in front of a painting that her lagging son all but cannons into her. “Isn’t it amazing?” The boy leans forward to look. “It was a