vanitas

Harmen Steenwijck, Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life, c. 1640. Oil on oak. The National Gallery, London. Presented by Lord Savile, 1888. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This is a still-life by Dutch artist, Harmen Steenwijck. The dude doesn’t mess around – a hyper-realist skull stares right back at you, amidst a cluster of nice-looking belongings. This painting is an example of vanitas, a movement that took hold during the prosperity of the 18th-century in the Netherlands. Taking its name from the Latin word meaning ‘emptiness’, this genre of painting puts a bunch of objects together in a casual reminder of your own mortality.

The objects are a bit of a symbolist Where’s Wally situation, so bear with me. To the left of the skull you’ll see a timepiece and above it, a recently extinguished oil lamp – both referencing the passing of time. Beyond this, you’ve got books, instruments and a couple of collector’s items; the samurai blade and the shell. It’s no real surprise to see these kinds of things given the success of Dutch trade routes, but they’re a great indication that the ‘collector’ is baller AF.

This collection has a hefty price tag and references the pleasures of a successful 18th-century life; knowledge, power, military prowess, beauty and, probably even sex (the proximity of the hilt of the sword and the shell make for a pretty common innuendo for sex, but then again art historians argue that literally anything can be interpreted that way.) The still-life stands in stark contrast to the upper half of the composition, where the lighting shifts from ethereal beam to pitch-darkness. This is a compositional technique often used to reference death through contrast: a full image, next to an empty one, light and dark. It can be read in a lot of ways but put simply, you’ve got all this, then suddenly you don’t.

More generally, vanitas paintings usually take one of two routes; the pious reading which cautions the viewer against the sinful delights of earth, which will distract them from salvation or the comparatively secular approach, which encourages you to enjoy what you’ve got while it lasts. Either way, the genre is a visual reminder of how short life can be and to make the most of it, whatever that might mean for you.