Vanitas w sztuce nowożytnej

Abstract

The motifs of vanitas were already used in ancient art, but they gained the greatest popularity only in the 17th and 18th centuries. Secular and sepulchral art abounds in various motifs of this kind, for example in the shape of human skulls, dying candles, musical instruments, soap-bubbles, damaged books, ruins, dead trees, shells or official emblems like the papal tiara, the episcopal or ducal mitre, the crown or the turban. All those motifs of vanitas symbolise vanity and the passage of time as well as convey the message memento mori – remember your mortality.