Tartt had already settled on the name of Theo Decker for her protagonist. It was only later that someone pointed out the correspondence of his initials and hers – DT and TD – and the fact that both names have same 10-letter sonorous cadence. And it was not until she had written the section about Theo salvaging The Goldfinch from the explosion at the Met that she learnt that shortly after completing the painting Fabritius himself had died in an explosion, at the gunpowder arsenal in Delft. At the time of the explosion he was painting the portrait of a church deacon. His name was Simon Decker.