Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun painting A type of
still life painting,symbolic ofmortality , characteristic of Dutch painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word vanitas.
Examples
-
Some of her pictures are almost an updated index to the symbols used in vanitas, those treatises-in-oil that comment on the transience of time and earthly life: clocks, flickering candles, half-empty wine goblets.
-
The word vanitas referred to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity, so vanitas painting were full of symbols reflecting this depressing world view.
Archive 2009-07-01 Hels 2009
-
The word vanitas referred to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity, so vanitas painting were full of symbols reflecting this depressing world view.
-
Brandon Dorman scatters the pages with objects found in Dutch vanitas paintings — a skull, a clock, flickering candles.
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
-
The skull that Witkin's "Van Gogh" peers at is real, but its purpose in being there is to make the painting a "vanitas" which is a tradition that references the history of art.
John Seed: Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy John Seed 2010
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.