Reading visual art - Vanitas in the 17th century
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We all go through times when life seems so transient and empty, when worldly goods and the pleasures of the flesh are hollow and fleeting. Those feelings are not unique to our age. There have been periods when the emptiness and transience of life have become such dominant themes that they have been expressed in waves of art: in European painting, in the form of Vanitas (vanity) paintings.
With its long Christian tradition, European art has associated these feelings with the worthlessness of earthly possessions, and the promise of life after death. These are crystallised in the wisdom literature of the Bible, in particular a verse from Ecclesiastes, given in the Latin translation of the Vulgate as vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas, or vanity of vanities, all is vanity, although here the word vanity refers to feelings of emptiness and futility, rather than conceit.
Vanitas paintings thus point to:
- the brevity of life on earth,
- the imminence of death,
- the worthlessness of earthly riches,
- the futility of earthly pursuits and pleasures.
Because those are abstract concepts, the challenge in every Vanitas painting is to find the right symbols, generally accomplished through an allegorical language. They also overlap with other popular themes in painting, such as the Memento mori, or the reminder of one’s own mortality. Although particularly popular in the Low Countries, now Belgium and The Netherlands, they are also to be found in works by artists from elsewhere. This article reads examples from the height of their popularity during the seventeenth century, and tomorrow’s sequel completes this with more recent works.
Jan Sanders van Hemessen (1500–1579), Vanitas (c 1535-40), media and dimensions not known, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Lille, France. Wikimedia Commons.
These paintings have their origins back in the Northern Renaissance. For example, Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Vanitas from about 1535-40 features an unusual androgynous angel with butterfly wings, cradling a human skull with fragmentary Latin inscriptions. Within the skull is an inset window, through which there is a tiny landscape view.
Clara Peeters (fl 1607-1621), Still Life of Fruit, Dead Birds and a Monkey (1615-20), oil on panel, 47.4 x 65.6 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
When Vanitas paintings became popular, they were most commonly expressed in carefully composed still lifes. Clara Peeters’ Fruit, Dead Birds and a Monkey (1615-20) shows a typically peculiar collection of objects: at first glance a basket of fruit, but the grapes are covered with bloom, a peach is going rotten, and there is a fly on an apple. The little monkey, busy feeding from nuts, is gazing at a small pile of dead birds.
These became elaborate and contrived at times, and sometimes involved a self-portrait.
Clara Peeters (fl 1607-1621), Vanitas Portrait of a Woman (Self-Portrait?) (c 1618), oil on panel, 37.2 x 50.2 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.
In Peeters’ Vanitas Portrait of a Woman, the artist gazes into the distance, probably a carefully-angled mirror to see her own reflection. Beside her head is a bubble, a sign that this is a Vanitas painting. In front of her, on the table, are the contents of a still life, with the worldly symbols of Vanitas: gold and silver coins, jewellery, a couple of dice, with their association with chance and earthly pleasures such as gambling.
Cornelis de Vos (1585–1651), Allegory on Transitoriness (1620-29), oil on canvas, 190 x 194 cm, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.
In Cornelis de Vos’s Allegory on Transitoriness (1620-29), a mother, possibly the artist’s wife, sits looking full of Vanitas, as her two children blow soap bubbles. Around her, the family’s most valuable possessions are piled up: gold, silver, porcelain, a lute, a string of pearls and other jewellery, and the younger child’s foot rests on a sack of cash.
Carstian Luyckx (1623–after 1657), Allegory of Charles I of England and Henrietta of France in a Vanitas Still Life (date not known), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL. Image by Sean Pathasema, via Wikimedia Commons.
Carstian Luyckx brings in additional objects to his undated Allegory of Charles I of England and Henrietta of France in a Vanitas Still Life. These include a globe representing the physical world, the gall from a tree, a snuffed-out candle, seashells, and coral. He uses another common device found in Vanitas painting: an open book, here showing King Charles I, who was executed in 1649, and his wife Henrietta Maria of France, who was deposed as queen of England by the civil wars, forcing her to flee to France in 1644.
David Bailly (1584–1657), Self-Portrait with Vanitas Symbols (1651), oil on panel, 65 x 97.5 cm, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
David Bailly’s Self-Portrait with Vanitas Symbols (1651) is a complex web of allegory containing multiple portraits referring to the past. The figure shows him as a much younger man, holding the maulstick he used in painting. His actual self-portrait at the time is in the painting held with his left hand. Next to that is a painting of his wife, who had already died, and a ghostly image of her is projected onto the wall behind the wine glass.
Gathered in front of the artist are ephemera and other signs of Vanitas: the snuffed-out candle, a glass of wine, flowers, and soap bubbles, together with a string of pearls and a skull. If that message isn’t clear enough, he provides the quotation on a piece of paper: vanitas vanitum et omnia vanitas, together with his signature and date. This painting is also unusual for its innovative use of colour and monochrome passages to distinguish its features from their ground.
Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681) and Gesina ter Borch (1633–1690), Memorial Portrait of Moses ter Borch (1645-1667) (1667-69), oil on canvas, 76.2 x 56.5 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.
Gerard ter Borch’s younger half-sister Gesina modelled for some of his paintings and trained as a painter herself. Between 1667-69, brother and sister painted this Memorial Portrait of Moses ter Borch (1645-1667) to commemorate their younger brother Moses, also a promising artist, who was killed in the Second Anglo-Dutch War in the summer of 1667. Centred on his full-length posthumous portrait, he’s surrounded by Vanitas symbols. Those include a snake, a butterfly, a watch, a small pipe, armour, an hourglass, a skull, shells, weapons, snails, fungal decay, and withering flowers.
Evert Collier (c 1640–1708), A Vanitas (1669), oil on canvas, 33 × 46.5 cm, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO. Wikimedia Commons.
Evert Collier’s A Vanitas from 1669 is another collection, showing additional objects which became involved in the allegory, including a sword, armour, fine fabrics, and ornamental feathers.
Karel Dujardin (1626–1678), Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles, an Allegory on the Transitoriness and Brevity of Life (1663), oil on canvas, 116 × 96.5 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst (Den Kongelige Malerisamling), Copenhagen, Denmark. Wikimedia Commons.
Some later Vanitas paintings developed the theme of young boys blowing bubbles, as in Karel Dujardin’s Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles, an Allegory on the Transitoriness and Brevity of Life from 1663.
Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), Penitent Mary Magdalene (c 1635-40), oil on canvas, 97 x 66 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Wikimedia Commons.
Another motif in which feelings of Vanitas became involved is that of Mary Magdalene, shown well in Jusepe de Ribera’s Penitent Mary Magdalene (c 1635-40), who leans her head against a skull, with a small globe in the foreground.
By the following century, Vanitas had subsided, only to return in the late nineteenth century.
https://eclecticlight.co/2024/03/19/reading-visual-art-122-vanitas-in-the-17th-century/