A goldfinch lives at the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam—a goldfinch trained to draw water from a well with a tiny bucket. Painted by Rembrandt’s pupil Carel Fabritius in 1654 (and made even more famous by the eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 2014), the goldfinch recalls the city’s 17th-century Golden Age when goldfinches were popular companions in the private gardens of Amsterdam’s canal houses—and therein one good reason why the reproduction of Fabritius’s famous trompe-l’œil painting hangs at Goldfinch Brasserie alongside the hotel’s luxuriant tulip garden.
