Vanitas Still Life

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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Jan Jansz. Treck’s complex but sombre picture is a vanitas, a type of still life that holds a moral message. A still life often presents costly objects in an elegant composition to be admired and discussed by the viewer, like the musical instruments, lacquer box, Rhenish jug and scarf made with gold and silver thread here. A vanitas disturbs the serenity, introducing objects with symbolic meaning: life is short, and luxury and greed – the wearing of glamorous garments, drinking wine and smoking – are worthless in the face of inevitable death.

In Treck’s painting, these are a skull, an overturned hourglass, a straw for blowing bubbles that will burst and disappear and a spent pipe, its still-burning embers by its side. Yet while the painting reminds us of the vanity of all human endeavour, it also drives home the point that art – and Treck’s painting – will endure.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

Vanitas Still Life

Date

1648

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 90.5 x W 78.4 cm

Accession number

NG6533

Acquisition method

Presented by Anthony N. Sturt and his wife Marjorie, 1991

Work type

Painting

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The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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