Vanitas still life after 17th century painting

by Emajeur Fotografie

Vanitas is a theme in art. The word vanitas is Latin and means vanity and emptiness. With, for example, skulls, extinguished candles, wilted flowers, soap bubbles, decayed books, musical instruments, clocks or fallen glasses, the vanity, temporality and futility of earthly things are visualized.

Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas is a well-known saying from the Bible Book of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of Vanities, Everything is Vanity." Other bible translations besides "vanity" by the state translation for Vanitas are "void", "air," volatility "," rarer than rarely ". But nowadays vanity reads a self-righteousness, for air one thinks of oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere, for volatility, a liquid that volatilizes, and thin air is thought of at the top of the mountains, but that is not all of vanitas: nowadays the meaning would come closest to "hot air", which is really "nothing" without that it refers to "not-something".

The vanitas painting has a Protestant-Christian origin. It encourages the viewer to focus on eternal life.

This painting theme was used in the 17th century, especially in the Netherlands and Flanders. Some painters: Pieter Claesz, Harmen and Pieter Steenwijck and Herman Hengstenburgh.

Even in modern times, magic-realistic painters, for example, resort to this subject, such as Raoul Hynckes, Wim Schuhmacher and Uko Post.

Source: Wikipedia