Memento Mori in Western Art
by Virginia Brilliant
Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes omnia vanitas // Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
—Ecclesiastes 12:8
Throughout the seventeenth century, a dark genre of still life painting flourished across Europe, and particularly in the Netherlands—the vanitas. During this period of impressive mercantile prosperity, frequent military conflict, and religious upheaval and reform, vanitas paintings were populated with symbolic objects intended to emphasize the brevity of life, the worthlessness of earthly pleasures and goods, and the futility of any quest for power and glory.
Vanitas still lifes are closely related to the earlier tradition of memento mori—Latin meaning “remember you must die.” From the late Middle Ages, memento mori emblems could be found in works of nearly every medium, from paintings and sculptures to drawings and prints, and ranged from unambiguous depictions of skulls, decaying food and bodies, and shattered objects (figs. 1, 2). Eat, drink, and be merry if you must, these objects suggest, because death is nigh.
Some of the most striking examples of memento mori may be found in funereal sculpture, in the so-called transi or cadaver tombs which present decayed corpses of the deceased (fig. 3). Executed for wealthy patrons in the fifteenth century, surviving examples offer a stark reminder of the vanity of earthly riches. So too do chapels of bones like the Capela dos Ossos in Évora or the crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome (fig. 4), in which the walls are covered in human remains. Indeed, the entrance to the Capela dos Ossos bears the following warning: “We bones, lying here bare, await yours.” Meanwhile, the Dance of Death, in which dancing Grim Reapers carry off rich and poor alike decorated the walls of many late medieval European churches (fig. 5). Timepieces reminded people that their stint on Earth grew shorter with every passing minute. Public clocks were embellished with mottos such as ultima forsan (“perhaps the last” [hour]) or vulnerant omnes, ultima necat (“they all wound, and the last kills”), while individuals carried smaller reminders of their own mortality. Mary Queen of Scots, for example, owned a large death’s head watch carved in the form of a silver skull and embellished with the lines from Horace: “Pale death knocks with the same tempo upon the huts of the poor and the towers of Kings.” Skulls and admonitory mottoes could be found on other personal items too, especially jewelry-death was an omnipresent part of life (fig. 6).
In recent years, fascination with this genre has resurfaced. Images of death seem to be everywhere, from forceful works by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst (fig. 7) to the fashions of Alexander McQueen, from mock skeletons on suburban lawns at Halloween to the ossi di morti biscuits sold in Italian bakeries, from skull emojis to Disney’s animated film Coco, inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead.
In paintings, memento mori began appearing on the back of portraits made in fifteenth-century Europe, often taking the form of a skull situated within a niche and accompanied by an admonitory motto. That message would remind the sitter that while they might desire to have their visage immortalized, the only way to preserve their soul in the afterlife is to lead a virtuous life. One famous memento mori appears on Jan Gossaert’s Carondelet Diptych (fig. 8). The artist painted a skull with a dislocated jaw, alluding to the eradication of the personality after death. The somber message below reads: “He who thinks always of death can easily scorn all things.”
In the light of this substantial tradition of memento mori, the vanitas still life was a natural next step. In what is believed to be the earliest known work of that genre, Jacques de Gheyn the Younger’s Vanitas Still Life, the artist portrayed a skull with a large soap bubble floating above it (fig. 9). This motif refers to the notion of homa bulla: the idea that humanity is as ephemeral and fragile as a bubble. The artist furthermore depicted a wheel of torture and a leper’s rattle reflected in the bubble, warning of the various misfortunes that might befall a man during his lifetime. The cut flowers and smoking urn at either side of the painting symbolize the brevity of life, while the coins and medallions scattered at the bottom of the piece refer to the irrelevance of worldly wealth.
With the proliferation of the genre over the course of the seventeenth century, artists harnessed a great variety of objects to expressing the principles of vanitas. Skulls, snuffed candles, and burnt-out lamps were among the most obvious symbols of mortality. A clay pipe trailing wisps of smoke vanishing into the air was another potent allusion to the fleeting nature of human life. Hourglasses, open pocket watches, and clocks suggested the passing of time and subtly reprimanded those who dared waste the precious resource. Positioned alongside these symbols, an empty or overturned wineglass could suggest the transience of life. Instruments such as the lute conveyed a similar message—music in its inherent ephemerality became a metaphor for the transience human existence.
More subtle allusions to death—and salvation through adherence to Christian faith—could also be found in still life paintings featuring flowers or fruit. In Balthashar van der Ast’s Fruit Basket (fig. 10), the grapes, which often symbolized Christ, are still fresh, while the other fruits are blighted by bruises and wormholes. The presence of flies and lizards, both of which could represent evil, hint at the physical and moral decay that will occur if one does not follow a righteous path.
Other paintings included attributes that were specific to a particular person’s life, such as scientific instruments, works of art, or military insignias and weapons. These would often be portrayed alongside more obvious vanitas symbols to encourage contemplation of one’s individual, personal trajectory. The university town of Leiden, famous for its theological faculty and humanist tradition, was noted for its vanitas still lifes featuring books or scientific objects. Such motifs derived from the iconography of Saint Jerome, the patron saint of scholars, often shown meditating in his study, which was typically furnished with books, an hourglass, and a skull (fig. 11). While some vanitas still lifes created in this scholarly milieu may have sought to emphasize the humanist concept that spiritual and intellectual pursuits outlive mortal existence, dog-eared books heaped in negligent disarray may have been intended to criticize the vanity of professional accomplishment and warn against excessive pride in learning (fig. 12).
Still other works make elegant allusions to the futile quest for power, such as Antonio de Pereda’s Allegory of Transience (fig. 13), in which an angel holds a cameo portraying the Emperor Charles V, while gesturing to a globe to demonstrate the once-great extent of the Habsburg Empire which, almost a century after his death, lay divided. Skulls surround the fine armor and weapons on the table at her side, indicating the pointless human cost of such endeavors.
Peter Boel’s Allegory of the Vanities of the World (fig. 14) is another masterpiece of the vanitas genre, in which a panoply of baroque grandeur, wealth, and riches is heaped atop a sarcophagus in a slowly crumbling church. Several objects, including a parade helmet, a breastplate, and a quiver of arrows, allude to the vainglorious nature of military conquest. Meanwhile, the vanity or emptiness of intellectual and artistic achievement is suggested via an artist’s palette, books, and documents. A king’s crown, a bishop’s mitre, a papal tiara, and a crowned turban sitting atop a robe of ermine-edged silk brocade are emblems of political and ecclesiastical power. Beside the turban sits a skull crowned with the laurel wreath of victory—a potent reminder that death conquers all.
Or, perhaps, not quite all. In his Vanitas Still Life with Violin and Glass Ball (fig. 15), Pieter Claesz, one of the most accomplished still life painters of the Dutch Golden Age, shows off his virtuosity in his depiction of a number of vanitas motifs. An overturned roemer (a kind of German wine glass with a green stem) reflects a window, which can also be seen on the left side of the composition in a glass ball—where we can also see Claesz himself. The artist combined the early Netherlandish innovation of a convex mirror, which throws back an image from the viewer’s space, with the ephemeral symbol of homa bulla. By portraying himself at work within the orb, Claesz insists that the power of art transcends time.
Fig. 1. Master IAM of Zwolle, Memento Mori, late 1400s, engraving, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 2.Memento Mori Prayer Bead, ca. 1500–50, ivory, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.
Fig. 3. Cadaver Monument of John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel (d. 1435), Fitzalan Chapel, Arundel Castle, Sussex.
Fig. 4. Crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome.
Fig. 5. Bernt Notke, Dance of Death, late 1400s, oil on panel, Eesti Kunstimuuseum, Tallinn, formerly Saint Nicholas’ Church, Tallinn.
Fig. 6. Death’s Head Timepiece, 1500s, Clockmakers’ Museum, London.
Fig. 7. Damien Hirst,For the Love of God, 2007, White Cube Gallery, London.
Fig. 8. Jan Gossaert, Exterior panel of the Carondelet Diptych, 1517, oil on panel, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Fig. 9. Jacques de Gheyn the Younger,Vanitas Still Life, 1603, oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 10. Balthasar van der Ast, Fruit Still Life, ca. 1600, oil on panel, Galerie Florence de Voldère, Paris.
Fig. 11. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,Saint Jerome Writing, 1605–6, oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Fig. 12. Edwaert Collier, Vanitas Still Life, 1662, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 13. Antonio de Pereda,Allegory of Transience, ca. 1640, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Fig. 14. Pieter Boel,Allegory of the Vanities of the World, 1663, oil on canvas, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille.
Fig. 15. Pieter Claesz,Still Life with Violin and Glass Ball, 1628, oil on panel, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.
VIRGINIA BRILLIANT
represents Robilant+Voena, one of the world’s leading Old Master and modern galleries, in New York. She obtained her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2005, and held curatorial positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco until 2018.
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