Stop 6 - Vanitas Still Life

“Stevers”, Vanitas Still Life, mid 17th c, oil on canvas, 45 x 52 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, SK-A-2358

This is a characteristic example of a Dutch seventeenth-century vanitas still-life painting by the otherwise unrecorded artist “Stevers”. Rooted in the verse from the book of Ecclesiastes “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, the moralising subject of these paintings is the transience of life and ultimate futility of all earthly endeavour. These themes are expressed through a range of objects gathered on a stone-top table: A viola has fallen silent, as it rests on a pile of closed books. A candle is long extinguished and so is the clay pipe placed on the pewter plate in the foreground. The papers remain unread, the leaves of the open book unturned. The globe stands still, its promise of travel even as an intellectual pursuit is unfulfilled. Sand may still be running through the hourglass, but its reflection as it passes into the lower section of the timepiece is yet another reminder of the fleeting nature of life. The skull, finally, can be read both in relation to the books as the symbol of a philosopher or thinker, and, of course, as a solemn reminder of the inevitability of death.

As we are presented with items from a scholar's study, the topic here is intellectual conceit, the vanity of all learning. The overall mood of this work is sombre, its palette restrained. With the exception of the globe, luxury goods are absent, and there is no material evidence of the Dutch Republic's expanding trade empire. Other contemporary still lives delight in portraying precious and exotic objects the Dutch East India Company had brought home, from status symbols like Chinese porcelain to treasures of nature, such as rare shells.

Vanitas still lives often capture a deeply seated conflict in Netherlandish attitudes towards the country's increasing prosperity. To the Calvinist Dutch, affluence was both a sign of divine grace and a potential source for corruption. It was therefore both welcomed and greeted with wariness. In the paintings, these feelings are mirrored in the tension between their obvious delight in the beauty of precious objects on display and the moralising warning that all, in the end, is vanity.

Vanitas

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions