vanitas

Vanitas is a genre of still-life painting that uses symbolic objects to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of worldly pleasures, and the certainty of death. It developed in the late 16th century in the Northern Netherlands and Flanders, and is closely allied with the broader memento mori tradition. The term derives from Latin vanitas, meaning emptiness or vanity.

Typical motifs include skulls and skeletal remains, extinguished or waning candles, hourglasses or clocks, wilting flowers and rotting fruit, discarded books, musical instruments, coins or luxury items, mirrors, and religious objects such as crucifixes or rosaries. Placed together on a table or shelf, these items juxtapose wealth and knowledge with decay to suggest that all earthly possessions are transient.

The genre flourished in Dutch Golden Age painting. Early exponents include Harmen Steenwijck, who helped establish the form, while Pieter Claesz, Willem Claesz Heda, and Jan Davidsz de Heem produced elaborated vanitas works blending abundance with mortality. The paintings are often quiet and contemplative, employing restrained palettes and precise lighting to focus attention on the symbolic items rather than on illusion of space.

In art history, vanitas is linked to memento mori and to Protestant, humanist, and Catholic pieties that emphasized mortality and the afterlife. Its influence persisted in later still-life and symbolist painting, and the term is used today to describe works that reflect on the fragility of life and the emptiness of material pursuits.