In this 'Vanitas Still Life' (1603) by Jacques de Gheyn II he uses the symbol of Homo Bulla, "man is but a bubble" above the skull. Human life is vanity like a thin soap bubble that first flickers w/ colors for a brief moment then quickly bursts & vanishes like it never existed.

De Gheyn's Vanitas(1603) is considered to be the earliest known independent still-life painting of a vanitas subject:skull, large bubble, cut flowers & smoking urn refer to the brevity of life. Images mirrored in bubble: wheel of torture & leper’s rattle, refer to human folly [1]

Like Comedy & Tragedy Masks, the figures flanking the arch above are Democritus and Heraclitus, the laughing and weeping philosophers of ancient Greece. [2]

The worldly riches of gold & silver coins in the Vanitas painting reminds me of Cicero's wise words:

Ut nihil pertinuit ad nos ante ortum, sic nihil post mortem pertinebit.

"As we possessed nothing before birth, so we take nothing with us after death."

P.S. the Latin expression 'Homo Bulla' or "man is a bubble" was first coined by the 1st c. BC Roman writer Marcus Terentius Varro found in his only complete work extant, Rerum rusticarum libri tres (Three Books on Agriculture) [1]

To accompany this thread on Vanitas, there's nothing more fitting than this sublime Bach piece of organ music: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543 masterly performed by Peter Hurford.- Enjoy!