In this & #39;Vanitas Still Life& #39; (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& #39;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& #39;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 & #39;Homo Bulla& #39; 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& #39;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! https://youtu.be/cvbN4_hCfKo ">https://youtu.be/cvbN4_hCf...