Vanitas

A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are vanitas still lifes, a common genre in Netherlandish art of the 16th and 17th centuries; they have also been created at other times and in other media and genres.

Vanitas means 'futility' or 'worthlessness', that is, the pointlessness of earthly goods and pursuits, alluding to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8 Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas, translated "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" in the King James Bible.

Etymology

The Latin noun vānĭtās (from the Latin adjective vanus 'empty') means 'emptiness', 'futility', or 'worthlessness', the traditional Christian view being that earthly goods and pursuits are transient and worthless. It alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8, where vanitas translates the Hebrew word hevel, which also includes the concept of transitoriness.

Themes

Vanitas themes were common in medieval funerary art, with most surviving examples in sculpture. By the 15th century, these could be extremely morbid and explicit, reflecting an increased obsession with death and decay also seen in the Ars moriendi, the Danse Macabre, and the overlapping motif of the Memento mori. From the Renaissance such motifs gradually became more indirect and, as the still-life genre became popular, found a home there. Paintings executed in the vanitas style were meant to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. They also provided a moral justification for painting attractive objects .

Picture objects and interpretation

The engraving, through the title Vanitas (in the picture!), Gives valuable information about those objects and the associated activities that were interpreted as vain and transient.

References to the transience of earthly existence and the accumulated worldly treasures are present in almost every still life of the 17th century. Especially in the first half of the 17th century, the presentation of visually attractive and / or expensive luxury objects never seems to have been possible without the reference to the fragility of this earthly vanity, which is also included in the picture.  The Vanitasstillleben  in this context is the purest expression of this worldview in art. It can be understood as a "private devotional image" with the function of a "reminder of the meditation on death and eternal life."

Sibylle Ebert-Schifferer sees a difference between the references in other still life types (flower, meal, smoker still life etc.) and the autonomous Vanitasstillleben. The reference to the end in combination with the glorification of prosperity - for example in meal still life - has a negative effect. The contemplation of the inevitable in vanitasstill life with the tendency to overcome earthly vanity in the direction of eternal life in the hereafter is, however, a positive consideration. The vanitas image required of the contemporary viewer an active mental participation  - also in the sense of a moral reflection on himself.

The props of the Vanitas still lifes were grouped by Ingvar Bergström into three large groups. The first group includes symbols of earthly existence. They are things whose value is only seemingly stable: books, musical instruments, money and treasures, insignia of power and greatness, and works of fine art. At the same time, these objects outline the different areas of life: active everyday life (vita activa), intellectual life in art and science (vita contemplativa), and enjoyment and lust (vita voluptaria). The second group is made up of symbols of transience in the form of objects that are intrinsically disintegrating and whose appearance evokes the idea of ​​it, such as the skull, the hourglass, the dying candle, wilting flowers and fallen or broken glasses. The third group are the symbols of rebirth and eternal life such as ears of corn, laurel and ivy.

The significance of the objects as symbols and references in the Vanitastillleben as well as in all other Stilllebenarten is explained by contemporary intellectual riddles, poetry (Cats, Bredero, etc.) and especially the emblems popular at that time - especially Sinnemoppen of Roemer Visscher and Zinne -Belts of Jan van der Veen.

A special symbol of transience is the always found again in the Vanitasstillleben skull , which reveals the roots of this still life style in antiquity, the late medieval Memento-mori representations and the autonomous Vanitasdarstellungen on the outer sides of Diptychs. The depictions of the meditating Hieronymus in the midst of his books and scientific instruments - sometimes with a skull - probably still has a special significance.

An equally important object in vanitasstillleben is the book. On the one hand to be understood as a symbol of erudition, it embodied as an instrument of science, the arrogance to which the curiosity could lead. The stronghold of science in the 17th century in Holland was the university town of Leiden. This city may also be regarded as the center of the vanitas painting. Not least, this is probably due to the fact that noticeably often books, and thus the sciences, are thematized in the paintings and the vanitas image probably required a class to be designated as recipient.

The Vanitasstillleben had his great appearance in the still life painting especially in the 20s of the 17th century. It can not be a coincidence that the vanitas image, which so impressively addresses death as the end of everything earthly, has increasingly appeared in the course of a threatening political situation. In 1621, after a 12-year truce, the Protestant northern provinces resumed fighting with the Catholic Habsburgs. In addition there were plague epidemics in the years 1624/25 and 1636.   The thesis of the connection of vanitasstillleben and real life-threatening situations is supported by the fact that the production of such paintings to the West

Motifs

Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death; rotten fruit (decay); bubbles (the brevity of life and suddenness of death); smoke, watches, and hourglasses (the brevity of life); and musical instruments (brevity and the ephemeral nature of life). Fruit, flowers and butterflies can be interpreted in the same way, and a peeled lemon was, like life, attractive to look at but bitter to taste. Art historians debate how much, and how seriously, the vanitas theme is implied in still-life paintings without explicit imagery such as a skull. As in much moralistic genre painting, the enjoyment evoked by the sensuous depiction of the subject is in a certain conflict with the moralistic message.

Composition of flowers is a less obvious style of Vanitas by Abraham Mignon in the National Museum, Warsaw. Barely visible amid vivid and perilous nature (snakes, poisonous mushrooms), a bird skeleton is a symbol of vanity and shortness of life.

Artist and development

By Jacques de Gheyn II exists already from 1603 an autonomous representation of Vanitas, in which the skull as a symbol of death has its place. His pupil David Bailly is considered an essential master of the Vanitasstillleben. His activities as a painter in Leiden from 1613 coined many artists associated with the city, thus establishing the reputation of suffering as an essential center of still life painting.

Rembrandt also had his studio in the city before moving to Amsterdam in 1631. Rembrandt is not famous for his still lifes, but influenced his clayey, especially brown shades preferred painting the surrounding artists immensely - even those of David Baillys.   Also interesting are the still lifes of Rembrandt's pupil Gerard Dou. They are best described as a hybrid of autonomous vanitas and trompe-l'œil. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Dou did not produce his still lifes as paintings to be sold, but decorated with these the doors of the cabinets, in which he kept his precious and meticulously executed fine paintings.

Rembrandt's tonal style of painting as well as Leyden's still life painting had an effect on another great artist of the century - Jan Davidsz. de Heem. From this artist, who would later become famous above all for his large flower and fruit compositions, there are early paintings from his time in Leiden (1625-31) in the style of typical for the city, in brown shades held book still life.

Also the two painters Pieter Claesz, famous for their meal still life. and Willem Claesz. Heda from Haarlem were convincing vanitas painters. Claesz. early Vanitastillleben from 1624 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden deals with the topic quite independently. The portrait painting shows objects presented in front of a curtain, such as a gold lidded cup, shells, a clock, a book, etc. Claesz. However, it did not stay with this conception of the image and painted vanity paintings at different times, which, however, clearly corresponded to the style of the monochrome banketjes.

In the following generation of painters fall especially the two nephews and students of Bailly - the brothers Pieter  and Harmen Steenwijck  - as a painter of Vanitasstilllebens on. Harmen Steenwijcks Vanitasstillleben of about 1640 in the National Gallery in London, however, is no longer a tonal book still life, but again a more local color emphasizing arrangement. It shows various objects, including a lute, a conspicuously placed shell and the skull. Especially the presence of large white spaces in the picture, the strong diagonal in the composition and the emphasis on the edge of the table.

Beyond suffering are Evert Collier , Vincent Laurensz. van der Vinne , N.L. Peschier , Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts and Franciscus Gijsbrechts  as an important vanitas painter. Sébastien Bonnecroy  represented, possibly mediated through Jan Davidsz. de Heem, the vanitas still life in Flanders. From Flanders came the Vanitasstillleben to France, where, for example, Simon Renard de Saint- André worked.

Especially in the second half of the 17th century vanitasstillleben lost its artistic significance and thus its importance.  The transformation according to the contemporary tendencies in the painting of Vanitasstillleben to almost purely decorative and almost overloaded pompous still life is for example in paintings by Jacques de Claeuw or Pieter Boel  no longer overlooked. Interesting in the second half of the 17th century and later manufactured Vanitasstillleben is the adoption of the high format and the combination of the arrangements of objects with a recognizable environment such as a study or a park landscape.

Vanitas outside visual art

The first movement in composer Robert Schumann's 5 Pieces in a Folk Style, for Cello and Piano, Op. 102 is entitled Vanitas vanitatum: Mit Humor.

Vanitas vanitatum is the title of an oratorio written by an Italian Baroque composer Giacomo Carissimi (1604/1605 -1674).

Composer Richard Barrett's Vanity, for orchestra, is greatly inspired by this movement.

Vanitas is the seventh album by British Extreme Metal band Anaal Nathrakh.

Vanitas in modern times

C. Allan Gilbert, All Is Vanity, drawing, 1892

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, artwork, 1987

Alexander de Cadenet, Skull Portraits, various subjects, 1996 – present

Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, sculpture (A diamond skull), 2007

Anne de Carbuccia, One Planet One Future, various subjects, 2013 – present.

Source From Wikipedia