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The title is also a pun, as this type of dressing-table is also known as a vanity. The phrase "All is vanity" comes from Ecclesiastes 1:2 ("Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.") [1] It refers to the vanity and pride of humans. In art, vanity has long been represented as a woman preoccupied with her beauty.
This painting falls within the genre of the vanitas still life, which Gijsbrechts practised principally until the later 1660s. [6] This genre of still life offers a reflection on the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transience of all earthly goods and pursuits. The term vanitas is derived from the famous line 'Vanitas, Vanitas.
On the lower right of the painting are inscribed the words 'Vanitas, Vanitas. Et omnia Vanitas', which refers to the famous line of the Ecclesiastes, which in the Latin version of the bible called the Vulgate 1:2; 12:8 is rendered as Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. In the King James Version it is translated "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity".
Et omnia Vanitas', in the book of the Ecclesiastes in the bible, which in the King James Version is translated as "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". [ 10 ] [ 11 ] The worldview behind the vanitas paintings was a Christian understanding of the world as a temporary place of fleeting pleasures and sorrows from which mankind could only escape ...
Vanitas by Antonio de Pereda. Vanitas (Latin for 'vanity', in this context meaning pointlessness, or futility, not to be confused with the other definition of vanity) is a genre of memento mori symbolizing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires.
Philosophically, vanity may be a broader form of egotism and pride. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that "vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality." [5] One of Mason Cooley's aphorisms is "Vanity well fed is benevolent. Vanity hungry is spiteful." [5]
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The work consists of six isolated panels which had originally been arranged recto-verso as pairs and were sawn apart at some point before 1890. Neither the order of the panels from left to right, nor the coupling of the pairs of paintings, is known with certainty; and because of the work's theological content, it is disputed if it was designed as a triptych or as a polyptych.