#11-Skull Candlestick - local market

Collected at Browns Bay market.

Two other examples:

In Europe throughout the 17th century, a gloomy type of still-life painting thrived known as Vanitas artwork. These works were loaded with Vanitas symbols meant to underline the fleeting nature of life, the absurdity of worldly pleasure, and the futile pursuit of status and fame. Vanitas artists produced these still-life paintings to portray to the viewer a sense of how temporary our existence is. 

Below: Still Life with a Skull and a Quill (1628) by Pieter Claesz

 What Is Vanitas? Vanitas is a type of art that focuses on death. It is a sub-category of memento mori artwork. Through this artwork, Vanitas artists were able to communicate that life was short and that trying to live life solely to achieve fame and recognition was a hollow and empty desire. The first of these paintings appeared on the back of portraits to remind the person who ordered the paintings that capturing their appearance did not stop the inevitable march of death. 

 What Is the Meaning of Vanitas? A vanitas is a metaphoric piece of art that depicts the fleetingness of existence, the waste of enjoyment, and the inevitability of demise, frequently juxtaposing images of prosperity with symbols of fragility of life and mortality. Vanitas still lifes, a popular genre in the Low Countries during the 17th centuries, are the most well-known; nevertheless, they have also been made at other eras and in various mediums and genres. The word vanitas implies ‘blankness,’ ‘pointlessness,’ or ‘unworthiness,’ and the conservative religious view is that worldly possessions and endeavors are fleeting and meaningless. It refers to biblical scripture, in which vanitas represents the Hebrew term hevel, which also encompasses the notion of transitoriness. 

 See: https://artincontext.org/famous-vanitas-paintings/

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