Carel Fabritius was baptized on February 27, 1622, in Middenbeemster town of the Dutch Republic (currently Noord-Holland province of the Netherlands). His father, Pieter Carelsz Fabritius, was a schoolteacher and an amateur painter.
Carel had two younger brothers, Barent and Johannes. Both of them also chose a painter's profession.
Carel Fabritius received the first painting lessons from his father. Then, between 1641 and 1643, along with his brother Barent, Fabritius joined the Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam where he pursued his artistic training. Carel became one of the most important and prosperous of the great master.
Carel Fabritius started his career in Delft, the Netherlands, where he came in the early 1650s. Two years later, the artist joined Saint Luc’s painters' guild of the town.
Soon, Fabritius became known for his murals (none of them survived) and portraits.
One of his earliest works, Raising of Lazarus, is very similar in style to Rembrandt art. But by the begging of the 1650s, the painter elaborated his own style. By contrast with his notable teacher, Fabritius placed the personages of his artworks on the light backgrounds and depicted the thinnest details of the daylight.
Despite his short lifetime (the artist and all his family died after the explosion at the gunpowder magazine), Carel Fabritius is considered as one of the most remarkable painters of the 17th-century’s Delft School.
Only about twelve paintings of the artist survived after the explosion, but nowadays about seventeen artworks attributed to the painter are preserved at the museums in the world. So, Hera Hiding During the Battle Between the Gods and the Giants is a part of the permanent collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Fabritius’s artwork called The Dismissal of Hagar, was bought at the Sotheby's New York auction called Old Master Drawings in 2008 for $37,000.
The style of the painter had a significant influence on two other painters, Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer. The latter is said to be Fabritius’s pupil.
One of the most known masterpieces of Carel Fabritius, Goldfinch, is the central subject in the novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt which was marked by the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2014). The same painting is on the wall at the Johannes Vermeer’s house in the movie about the painter called Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003).
The Raising of Lazarus
Mercury and Argus
The Goldfinch
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Self Portrait
Self-portrait
A young Man in a Fur Cap and a Cuirass
Servant Presenting Saul S Crown to David
Hera Hiding During the Battle Between the Gods and the Giants
Elderly Couple Distributing Goods to Children in Open Air
Abraham de Potter
The Gate Guard (the Sentry)
View of a Row of Houses in a City
A View of Delft with a Musical Instrument (Seller's Stall)
Christ Among the Doctors
Hagar and the Angel
Young Man Standing Holding a Rope
Two Standing Women with a Child
Saint Peter Being Freed from Prison
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
Bust of Rembrandt
Man in a Helmet
Mercury and Aglauros
Portrait of a Bearded Man
Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of a Seated Woman with a Handkerchief
Scholar at His Table
Study of an Old Man
Portrait of a Young Man
Three Dead Finches Hanging on a Nail
Carel Fabritius was married to Agatha van Pruyssen.
