Anyone who has ever seen goldfinches fluttering and chattering and alighting on seedheads in meadows, or watched them bumbling through the thistledown they love, will know why the word charm was chosen for their collective noun. A charm of goldfinches soars at dusk, swoops at dawn, sings upliftingly in summer trees. In flight, the yellow stripe spreads into a golden cape.
[CT scans of The Goldfinch] ...show...the painting bears the traces of a blast, the minuscule indentations of hurtling matter, broken shards, hard pellets blown scattershot....
the explosion registered in a surface that did not split or shatter because it was not dry. The Goldfinch was still wet, still drying
.... when I stand in front of this painting it carries the last of his energy....
The painting lives. The creator survives.
I once saw, in a hotel in Algiers, a Dutch still life of redcurrants glinting silver dish and was on a momentarily transported to a long-ago Delft day. Paintings can take you anywhere, but they are also a land in themselves, a society, a place to be.
---
So many fascinating pictures reproduced in this book.
pickChevalier imagines the “girl with the pearl earring” is the Vermeer family maid and this is her story. Griet is fascinated by Vermeer‘s paintings especially when he gets her to help him prepare the color paints. She develops an eye for his paintings, but she‘s just a maid and must keep her place while also being his model. And she must be especially careful around his jealous wife and her cunning daughter. A slow but still interesting read. ⬇️
#two4Tuesday
1) As an attorney, I routinely have to deal with attorneys on the opposite side of my case. I hate it when I lose my temper with them because they are rude or lie or speak down to me because I‘m a woman. I wish I could keep my cool and often I can. But sometimes I just lose it. 🤬
2) Griet is 16 and a new maid to artist Vermeer‘s family. She‘s struggling with the job and wants to go home even though she does the same work there.
pickFocusing on Dutch artist C. Fabritius and his painting A View of Delft with a Musical Instrument Seller‘s Stall, painted in 1652, the author tells Fabritius‘s story, her own, her father‘s, Delftt, and other Dutch artists. In other words, it is an all-encompassing book about Dutch art history but always comes back to Fabritius. He was killed as a result of a “thunderclap” of an explosion of stored gunpowder near his house, but that killed many ⬇️
I need to post more snapshots of food, here painted by Adriaen Coorte in 1697 since I‘m reading the tagged book for #Netherlands #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
