Expressing a weariness with this life and yearning for the next, they originated in Flanders, but soon became popular in the Dutch Republic in its Golden Age.
vanitas
Although not entirely new, from 1620 still life paintings were highly popular, thanks to skilled painters migrating from Flanders and Brabant to escape religious oppression.
Associated with the fire of the underworld, painted into life by Jupiter, attracted by Psyche, hunted on expeditions, in vanitas paintings, or just for their beauty.
After 1850, there was a resurgence of expressions of the emptiness and futility of earthly life, with symbols of death and transience of ephemeral objects.
Originating in the Northern Renaissance, these paintings expressed feelings of emptiness, and the futility of earthly life. Examples of these elaborate allegories.
Seashells appear in Turner’s myths, Dyce’s fresco for Queen Victoria, twice in Elihu Vedder’s work, and in Odilon Redon’s. And a story from Rubens about seashells and colour.
Huge clam shells were a common feature in paintings of the birth of Venus, and other classical myths. They also feature in many ‘vanitas’ paintings.
It flourished and brought commercial success to many artists, and laid the foundations for sub-genres. Still lifes were among the most innovative and exciting paintings of the day.
Between about 1607-21 she painted exclusively still lifes. Highly innovative, she led the way for the many painters who succeeded her.
Curious still lifes and more containing allegories about the emptiness and futility of life on earth, and its brevity. Even seen in Cézanne and Jacek Malczewski.
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