M HKA Ensembles

Painting, 134 x 115 x 6 cm.

Collection: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen.

A vanitas is a still life that depicts the impermanence of life. A classic example is this painting by Franciscus Gijsbrechts. A human skull is fittingly placed at the centre of the composition. It reminds us of our inevitable death. The upper jaw rests on a closed book. A run-out hourglass and an almost burnt-out candle refer to the passing of time. The floating soap bubbles on the left remind us of the fragility of life. The marble tabletop shows cracks, because in the light of eternity even the hardest stone is perishable. The pipe, the paper with tobacco, the music score and the instruments point to the pleasures of life as fleeting as smoke that die out as fast as musical tones. The book and pince-nez refer to the relativity of knowledge. The royal charter under the skull and the globe in the back of the still life make clear that power and wealth are temporary as well.

The painter arranges the apparent disarray of props into a miraculous composition with a sophisticated planar division. A subdued palette with ochre, pink, white, grey and black emphasizes the seriousness of the subject. The Antwerp artist Franciscus Gijsbrechts is a specialist in the genre. He was possibly an assistant of his father, the trompe-l'oeil painter Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, who worked for the Danish royal court.