All Is Vanity: The Language of Vanitas in Art

She sits completely still. The room is dark; only the faint glow of a candle falls on her face, and even that seems to be fading. Georges de La Tour often painted Mary Magdalene in a state of self-forgetful devotion. He depicts transience in a very restrained manner.

The same applies to Magdalena with the smoking flame. There is not much more than a skull on Mary Magdalene's lap and a dying flame. Yet it encapsulates what vanitas paintings have depicted for centuries: an awareness of transience and the desire to express it.

What is Vanitas?

In Latin, vanitas originally meant emptiness or nothingness, and was used to describe vanity in the sense of transience rather than self-love. In the context of art history, vanitas refers to the idea that all earthly things are fleeting and meaningless in the face of time. Beauty, possessions, and fame all melt away.

Those who rely exclusively on the visible world, or external stimuli or status, fail to recognise the transience of these things. Unlike memento mori, which focuses on death as the inevitable end, vanitas also considers what came before and how easily its meaning is lost. Decay does not begin with the last breath. It is part of life.

'Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas' – 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This biblical phrase from the Book of Ecclesiastes (formerly attributed to Solomon as the 'Book of the Preacher') became a leitmotif in Baroque art. A visual language was developed to this end, incorporating symbols, depicting not only death and transience, but also debauchery, decay, and the blind pursuit of knowledge.

Signs of Decay

The vanitas tradition features extensive imagery. Most symbols can be assigned to three main themes.
The first of these is probably the most striking: death and time. Skulls, bones, and hourglasses all point directly to the end. These are not subtle hints: the body dies. Time runs out. Life is lost.

Symbols of Death and Transience

• Skulls/bones – the most obvious symbol of mortality
• Hourglass/clock – the passing of time
• Extinguished or burnt-out candle – the end of life, or fading consciousness
• Smoke/flame – the fleeting, the intangible
• Soap bubble – dazzling beauty that bursts in the next moment
• Insects – decomposition, decay, but also rebirth (e.g., butterflies)
• Withered flowers – beauty that lasts only briefly

The second complex is less obvious at first. Mirrors, jewellery, musical instruments, wine goblets, and playing cards all represent earthly temptations. They represent beauty, wealth, and sensuality. They shine, seduce, and appear desirable. But all of this is unstable. Beauty fades. Pleasure evaporates. Wealth does not offer protection. All that often remains is an aftertaste of excess.

Symbols of Vanity, Wealth, Pleasure

• Mirrors – vanity, illusion, deception, but also truth and self-knowledge
• Jewellery/pearls/gold –  transitory wealth
• Musical instruments/sheet music –  fleeting sound, sensual pleasure
• Playing cards/dice –  gambling, chance, the impermanence of luck
• Wine/cups –  debauchery, pleasure, excess
• Fresh fruit (especially peaches, apples, grapes, or figs) –  carnality, seduction, lust
• Overripe or rotting fruit–  pleasure, excess, decay

And finally, there is the third level. It occurs somewhat less frequently: knowledge, power, and control. Symbols such as books, measuring instruments, and weapons represent intellectual or political order. They represent interpretive authority, influence, and control over the world and space. But they, too, are finite. They can be lost, inherited, fought for, or destroyed – in death, they are meaningless.

Symbols of Knowledge and Power

• Books – scholarship, knowledge, but also intellectual vanity
• Weapons/armour/crowns – earthly power that counts for nothing in death
• Globes/maps/measuring instruments – control over space and knowledge, which is ultimately limited

These three themes – the mortality of the body, the transience of the visible world, and the limitations of human power – encapsulate the essence of vanitas. They demonstrate our tendency to cling to the transitory despite knowing better.

However, many vanitas paintings not only depict decay, but also suggest possible ways of countering it. Symbols such as the cross, the Bible, or, as in Georges de la Tour's painting, the figure of Mary Magdalene represent repentance, conversion, and hope for eternity.

Visible to All – Different for Everyone

Vanitas had its heyday in the Baroque period, especially in the 17th century. This period was marked by the Counter-Reformation – the Catholic Church's response to the Reformation.
The Church was still the largest patron of art and painting. It deliberately used art as a form of public relations to convey religious content emotionally and powerfully. Wars, such as the Thirty Years' War, plague epidemics, and political instability made life uncertain. People were confronted with death daily.

In a strictly hierarchical society without social mobility, the prospect of earthly advancement was illusory. But the Christian promise was: the last shall be first. Vanitas paintings were a kind of promise that the circumstances of life would not have the last word, and that what the rich clung to would ultimately be worthless. On the other hand, they were a reminder not to strive for mere appearances.

The images were intended to remind the wealthy of their mortality. This was not a theoretical idea, but a very tangible moral imperative: be humble! Recognise that your wealth, your beauty, your power are transitory. At the same time, they also served as a means of stabilising the power of the church.

And that was the core of it all: death as an instrument of spiritual discipline.

For what came after – eternal life or purgatory – was administered by the Church.

When everything in this world passes away and our gaze turns to the hereafter, the soul must be saved as a matter of urgency. To this end, one should do good deeds in good time (give alms, donate to churches, etc.) and submit to the laws of the Church without question. Vanitas painting, also commissioned by wealthy or powerful individuals, fits into this context – even though (or perhaps because) it relativized their own status.

Many of these paintings were placed in private chapels, confessionals, or monasteries – as a constant reminder of one's own death and the correct behaviour in this world.

Transience in Three Acts

Vanitas is not a fixed style. It cannot be reduced to a single manifestation. The motifs and their symbolism are multi-layered. Some works depict transience with symbolic restraint; others conceal it within intricate details; and others still show it in all its clarity.

I would now like to introduce you to three paintings that explore transience from very different perspectives. The first and last are from the 16^(th) and 17^(th) centuries, the heyday of vanitas painting. The middle one is by Cézanne, the pioneer of modernism.
Each, in its own way, reveals the fragility of life.

Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors

Two men, richly dressed, between them a magnificent shelf with scientific instruments, world maps, globes, books, a lute. Everything in this picture speaks of education, influence, and cosmopolitanism. And yet: something is not right. A strange grey shadow stretches across the painting. Only when viewed at an acute angle does the perception shift, and a skull appears.

The two men stand far apart – as far as the format allows. Perhaps this is a reference to the tension between their roles. One (Georges de Selve) was a bishop, i.e., a representative of the faith. The other (Jean de Dinteville) was a diplomat, i.e., a representative of secular power. This is also suggested by the lute with its broken string (dissonance). But formally, the great distance also creates a certain symmetry.

Mathematics plays a major role in this painting. In the Middle Ages, the spiritual worldview was still far more important than the natural sciences. However, during the Renaissance, mathematics became one of the most significant disciplines. People wanted to know how the world worked. Painters also concerned themselves with it.

Holbein's painting is clearly structured, almost architecturally constructed. The strict alignment, the position of the figures, the staggering of the levels – everything follows a mathematical logic. All the instruments depicted on the shelf are used for mathematics. Even the lute. Music was considered one of the four disciplines of the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy) – in other words, applied mathematics.

The placement of the shelf between the two men shows the distance between spiritual and secular power, but it is also a connecting line. For despite all their differences, the two friends were united by their shared pursuit of knowledge.

Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors was painted in 1533, in the midst of a period of religious and political upheaval. Under Henry VIII, England was on the verge of breaking away from Rome, and with it, old certainties were beginning to falter. Holbein depicts the two men not as figures of status, but as representatives of a particular worldview: that of Renaissance humanism. A worldview in which knowledge, order and reason became central values.

The skull is not just another ingredient among others. It is a visual disruption. It literally makes the work a question of perspective. Only those who stand at an angle (27°) can see it. An impressive play on perception, but also a deeper message: death is there. Always. Even when it is suppressed.

Holbein shows that even knowledge has its limits, that insight is not everything. And that finitude lurks even where we feel safe. A typical vanitas imagery. But it would not have been necessary to depict the skull in a distorted manner to achieve this.
Holbein – himself influenced by humanistic thinking – does not question knowledge itself here. The distorted skull is not a product of chance, but the result of highly precise mathematical calculation. Its anamorphosis is based on geometric distortion, which only works if the skull is constructed according to exact rules of perspective.

Thus, the skull is not only a symbol of death, but ironically also a symbol of knowledge. It challenges the viewer to change their perspective, both literally and mentally. Those who see the skull understand more of the picture. Those who do not see it remain trapped in superficiality. Just as science actually leads to deeper and more comprehensive insights and helps us to see beyond appearances.

Symbolism in The Ambassadors

What Holbein shows is well thought out and ambiguous:

• The skull (anamorphically distorted) – the most striking symbol. Visible only from a sharp angle, it represents the omnipresent but often overlooked reality of death. Not just a memento mori, but a visual reminder: perception is deceptive, truth is not always immediately apparent.
• The lute with a broken string – a symbol of dissonance. In music, harmony was considered a reflection of divine order. The broken stringed instrument speaks of disturbed harmony – perhaps between science and faith, or between earthly order and intangible eternity.
• The book with Martin Luther's hymns – Holbein was in the service of the English court during Henry VIII's separation from Rome. The painting thus contains a hidden reference to the Reformation and religious division.
• Astrolabe, sundial, quadrant, torquetum – all astronomical-mathematical instruments with which one could measure celestial movements, determine time, and calculate geographical longitudes and latitudes – they also represent the idea that man can order, understand, conquer, and control the world. And thus also for the expansion of Europe in the Age of Discovery.
• Other measuring instruments –  They reinforce the importance of order, control, and knowledge of space and time in the image, thus representing the human endeavour to understand the world rationally.
• Globe (celestial and terrestrial globe) – Illustrates the mathematically based understanding of the world during the Renaissance in the context of cosmology and navigation.
• The crucifix behind the curtain (top left of the picture, barely visible) – a small, almost hidden reference to salvation. You need to look closely to see it.
  It is located in the line of sight of the anamorphically depicted skull.

Holbein was not a moralising vanitas painter in the classical sense. He was humanistically educated, active in the circle of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and he revered knowledge. The painting shows how precise, beautiful, and multi-layered thinking can be. But it also warns us that, in the end, all knowledge cannot help us escape death.

Paul Cézanne: Still Life with Skull

Cézanne's painting Still Life with Skull was created between 1890 and 1893, a good two hundred years after the heyday of vanitas painting in the Baroque period. It thus follows a long tradition. Still lifes have always been a popular genre for reflecting on transience.

They are not simply about a pile of objects on a table. A still life is composed, well thought out, sometimes arranged almost like on a stage. The artist organises the world, selects, gives meaning. As viewers, we interpret, compare, search for meaning. Precisely because still lifes do without action and figures, they challenge us more: we have to ask ourselves what is important.

Paul Cézanne painted numerous still lifes. He particularly often chose apples, which he valued for their round, clear shape and bright colour. For Cézanne, they were not accessories, but pictorial elements, forms that he rearranged again and again, studying light and perspective. His fruits are never completely idealised. They show spots, bruises, overripeness – subtle hints of the passing of time.

It was only in the last ten years of his life that Cézanne began to regularly include skulls in his paintings. Perhaps this was an expression of his preoccupation with his own mortality. But while Baroque vanitas paintings often employed rich symbolic language, Cézanne remained sober. In his Still Life with Skull, transience is unmistakably the focus, but the painting is not a ‘warning image’ calling for repentance or reminding people of their insignificance.

Instead, at its core, it is about the simultaneity of life and death, about their indissoluble connection. The plump, colourful fruits represent life, sensuality, the present moment – but they are transient, just like the skull that accompanies them without comment. They share the same space. The painting brings both into balance, without hierarchy.

In this way, Cézanne says: both belong to life. No pathos, no theatrical memento mori. The beauty of life is not negated, but rather sharpened by transience.

Symbolism in Still Life with Skulls

• Skull –  classic symbol of vanitas. Represents the finiteness of life, the inevitability of death.
• Fruit –  symbol of life, abundance, transience. Apples also represent temptation, knowledge. Their overripeness, spots or shriveled appearance already hint at decay. They are both beautiful and transient.
• Tablecloth –  reminiscent of a shroud.
• Drapery –  the carefully arranged composition almost resembles a stage set. Humans bring order to the world, but this order is unstable.
• Dark plants in the background –  could represent what has already withered, the last breath of life, the irretrievable.
• The bright colours of the fruit contrast with the pale skull –  life and death are not separated, but shown side by side.

The two orange ‘spots’ above the tablecloth and in the eye socket of the skull probably originate from another canvas that this painting was leaning against in Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence. The pigments were transferred by pressure or moisture, an unintentional imprint that Cézanne never painted over.

This fits in with his working method and his interest in the processes, the unfinished. But it can also be read as a further element of the transience and vulnerability of the material itself. The painting is not immortal either. It bears the traces of time.

Georges de la Tour: Magdalene with the Smoking Flame

In art, Mary Magdalene has been depicted as a seductive sinner, a penitent with a tormented gaze, a saint in the desert, and a meditative woman caught between renunciation and transcendence. In the early modern period, she increasingly became a symbol of repentance: a woman who had once succumbed to the temptations of the world and now, through remorse, had attained true knowledge.

Georges de la Tour painted various versions of Magdalene with a similar composition: a woman in semi-darkness, surrounded by a few objects, often gazing into the fire or into a mirror. In their simplicity and austerity, the scenes seem almost modern, detached from religious exaggeration.

But de la Tour painted at a time when France was marked by religious tensions, courtly control, and the Counter-Reformation. His paintings were therefore created in a deeply religious context. Why do they seem so surprisingly calm and reduced in comparison to other works of this era?

He lived and worked in Lorraine, at that time a border region with changing political conditions.
There he was, relatively isolated from the artistic fashions of the time, and developed his own style. His paintings – often without a patron – were not intended for the pomp of a court, nor were they intended for churches, but for private devotion.

Magdalene with the Smoking Flame appears like an intimate play. Everything superfluous has been eliminated. No hint of landscape, no angels, no biblical scene in the background. Only Magdalene, alone in a dark room, lost in thought. Her posture is calm, almost sculptural. One senses the weight that bears down on her. Her left hand supports her chin, her right hand rests on a skull. Her gaze is directed into the void, or perhaps inward. Nothing in this picture distracts the viewer.

The flame that gives the picture its title does not burn brightly. It smokes. It is the moment after the brightness, before the extinguishing. The light touches Magdalena's face, but it is fleeting.
The skull, the classic symbol of vanitas, is not placed on the table or viewed from a distance, as is usually the case, but is placed in Magdalena's lap in de La Tour's painting. This is an intimate, physical closeness. She touches it, leans on it, lets it come close to her.
Death is not a distant concept here; it has become tangible, embedded in her own physicality.

Since the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene has been equated with the nameless sinner from the Gospel of Luke who anoints Jesus' feet. Thus she became the ‘prostitute who repented’. This (problematic) identification continues to shape her portrayal to this day. When one considers this together with the skull in her lap, a double reading emerges:

On the one hand, it is a reversal: the place that was associated with lust or sin in patriarchal discourse becomes the bearer of knowledge – it no longer carries life, but insight into its end. On the other hand, it can be understood as a sign of repentance and purification: she has not only recognised death, but has also accepted it within herself. The body, which was once a place of sin, now becomes a place of spiritual transformation.

Symbolism in Magdalena with the Smoking Flame

• The flame – It represents human life, bright but fleeting. Here, it is almost extinguished, the wick already smoking. This refers to the end of life, the afterglow of the spirit, or the transience of all existence.
  The skull: The classic memento mori. But here it lies in Magdalena's lap, connecting it to her physically and symbolically.
• Books – They often represent knowledge, wisdom, or divine truth (e.g., the Bible). The fact that they are closed here can be interpreted in two ways. As an indication that the knowledge of the world is not (yet) open. Or that true knowledge comes not only from reading, but from inner insight. Taking this further, they could also refer to the fact that their role in history (the stories of the Bible) has come to an end.
• Knotted cord – In front of the books lies a knotted cord, a kind of penitential belt (scourge or knot of repentance) as used in a monastic context. It refers to penance, self-flagellation, or ascetic practice.
• Darkness – The room is largely bathed in black. The darkness represents separation from the world, but also uncertainty, death, and spiritual emptiness.
• Magdalena's bare feet – A sign of humility, earthiness, asceticism.
• Posture – She sits calmly, leaning slightly forward, resting her head in her hand – a gesture of melancholy, reflection, but also of burden.

There are at least four known surviving versions of Georges de La Tour's Magdalene in Meditation, all from the 1640s, all similar but not identical. In the 17th century, Mary Magdalene was one of the central figures of religious conversion. She combined sin and repentance, physicality and spirituality. This made her a particularly accessible figure of projection, for women and men, clergy and laity alike.

It is therefore quite possible that Georges de la Tour often painted Magdalene because she sold well. But he probably also had a deep artistic interest in the scene. For the Magdalene paintings condense everything that defines him artistically: strong lighting (chiaroscuro), reduced symbolism and psychological depth.

From the End of Transience

From the late 17th century onwards, vanitas painting in its classical form increasingly lost its significance. The religious and social upheavals that had given rise to it were over. In 1648, the Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of Westphalia. The Counter-Reformation lost influence, and open repression of Protestantism was no longer politically feasible.

From the late 17th century onwards, the number of major plague epidemics in Europe declined significantly. Agricultural reforms, the establishment of storage facilities, and climatic improvements after the ‘Little Ice Age’ eased the food situation for the population. Although major famines still occurred – e.g., in France in 1693–94 and 1709–10 – they no longer permanently dominated life, as they had in the mid-17th century.

The economic upturn also shifted the mood. Instead of spiritual purification, there was a growing desire for normality. People once again sought pleasure, beauty, and prestige. The Enlightenment placed reason at the centre, rather than the afterlife. The focus in art also shifted – towards courtly representation, later towards rationality, the bourgeois world, and sensitivity.

Vanitas motifs never completely disappeared, but they shifted in terms of form, content, and style. In the 18th century, they became mere aesthetic props in still lifes. Finely painted skulls, hourglasses, and smoke, without any warning, were used more as stylistic devices or fashionable accessories. In the 19th century, vanitas themes returned once again in a new form among the Romantics. Weathered graves, fog, and ruins still tell of transience, but no longer in the sense of ecclesiastical penance, but as a melancholic meditation on finitude.

To this day, vanitas symbols appear in art, in different forms, in different works – for example, in Andy Warhol's ‘Skulls’ or Damian Hirst's ‘For the Love of God’. Sometimes as a hint, sometimes as pure decoration. But sometimes also as a question without an answer. How do we measure our lives?
Every now and then, we need something to remind us of this question. Even if it is just a flame that is already beginning to smoke.