Vanitas

Vanitas is a loose category of artwork that illustrates the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often featuring heavy-handed allegory in the form of skulls, insects, rotting plants, candles burning low and hourglasses draining out a last few grains of sand. Vanitas paintings take their name from Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8 from the King James Bible: Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

Vanitas artwork also allowed artists during religious eras like the Northern Renaissance a sneaky excuse to paint still-lifes of beautiful, decadent objects behind a moral facade.