A special Goldfinch to renovate the house of the Girl with the Pearl Earring

 

In a couple of months the ambitious renovation project by Hans van Heeswijk Architects of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis will be completed. Director Emilie Gordenker succeeded former director Frits Duprac at the beginning of 2008 and she was appointed with a clear mandate: “to renovate also visitor experience at the museum”. The upcoming new wing is the effect of this plan.

 

The original 17th century building, a residential neoclassical palace constructed for the Dutch colonial administrator Johan Maurits between 1633 and 1644, will be extended into Plein 26, an art deco former office block that during the recent restoration revealed handsome atriums roofed with De Stijl-inflected stained glass and a grand, almost swollen-looking wooden banister that winds its way up through the building. At the end of the works the museum space will be doubled, including an auditorium, an education centre and a library, as well as the museum café.

 

Nevertheless, the lovers of the museum that hosts masterpieces like “The girl with a pearl earring” by Vermeer, or “The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” by Rembrandt should have noticed that a relevant addition to the institution has already been completed. However, the designer in this case is a novelist, instead of an architecture studio, and the process took no less then 11 years to be completed. In effect, the painting around which the last Donna Tartt’s novel has been conceived is the Goldfinch painted by Carel Fabritius in 1654, and purchased on 27 February 1896 in Paris by Abraham Bredius at the sale of the collection of Martinet at Hôtel Drouot especially for the Mauritshuis. Is this metaphysical kind of addition less valuable then the material one?

 

“This is just about the first painting I ever really loved,” my mother was saying. “You’ll never believe it, but it was in a book I used to take out of the library when I was a kid. I used to sit on the floor by my bed and stare at it for hours, completely fascinated – that little guy! And, I mean, actually it’s incredible how much you can learn about a painting by spending a lot of time with a reproduction, even not a very good one reproduction. I started off loving the bird, the way you’d love a pet or something, and ended up loving the way he was painted.” She laughed. “The Anatomy Lesson was in the same book actually, but it scared the pants off me. I used to slam the book shut when I opened it to that page by mistake”.

 

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013.

 

September 22, 2014