3-084-952 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Virgin and Child with Saints Peter and Paul, c1485. The Christ child holds a thread which is tied round the leg of a goldfinch. Nearly 500 Renaissance religious paintings, mainly by Italian artists, show the bird. In Medieval Christianity, the goldfinch's association with health symbolises the Redemption, and its habit of feeding on the seeds of spiky thistles, together with its red face, presaged the crucifixion of Jesus, where the bird supposedly became splattered with blood while attempting to remove the crown of thorns.