Collection 2

Vanitas

The vanitas emerged in the Dutch Republic at the moment it became the wealthiest society in Europe, and that is not a coincidence. Painters worked to a fixed grammar: a skull, a guttering candle, an hourglass, a flower past its best, arranged on a table and lit from a single source against near-total darkness. The restraint was technical as much as moral, a narrow range of blacks, bone whites and warm gold, with the whole composition depending on where the light falls rather than on what colour anything is. The message these pictures carried was never morbid. They were commissioned by people with a great deal to lose, and hung where guests would see them. The skull was there to sharpen everything else in the frame, not to spoil it.