Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art Volume 8, Issue 1 (Winter 2016) The Engagement of Carel Fabritius’s Goldfinch of 1654 with the Dutch Window, a Significant Site of Neighborhood Social Exchange Linda Stone-Ferrier
[email protected] Recommended Citation: Linda Stone-Ferrier, “The Engagement of Carel Fabritius’ Goldfinch of 1654 with the Dutch Window, a Significant Site of Neighborhood Social Exchange,” JHNA 8:1 (Winter 2016), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2016.8.1.5 Available at http://www.jhna.org/index.php/vol-8-1-2016/325-stone-ferrier Published by Historians of Netherlandish Art: http://www.hnanews.org/ Terms of Use: http://www.jhna.org/index.php/terms-of-use Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. This PDF provides paragraph numbers as well as page numbers for citation purposes. ISSN: 1949-9833 JHNA 7:2 (Summer 2015) 1 THE ENGAGEMENT OF CAREL FABRITIUS’S GOLDFINCH OF 1654 WITH THE DUTCH WINDOW, A SIGNIFICANT SITE OF NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL EXCHANGE Linda Stone-Ferrier This article posits that Carel Fabritius’s illusionistic painting The Goldfinch, 1654, cleverly traded on the experience of a passerby standing on an actual neighborhood street before a household window. In daily discourse, the window func- tioned as a significant site of neighborhood social exchange and social control, which official neighborhood regulations mandated. I suggest that Fabritius’s panel engaged the window’s prominent role in two possible ways. First, the trompe l’oeil painting may have been affixed to the inner jamb of an actual street-side window, where goldfinches frequently perched in both paintings and in contemporary households.