vanitas

American  

[van-i-tahs] / ˈvæn ɪˌtɑs /

noun

1. a type of still-life painting that flourished in the Netherlands from about 1620 to 1650, conveying a religious message and characterized by objects symbolic of mortality and the meaninglessness of worldly pleasures.

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Etymology

Origin of vanitas

1905–10; Latin: literally, vanity

Example Sentences

Harnett had much simpler taste than his patrons, and while “Ease” is not a vanitas painting auguring death, he was known for incorporating traces of humor and irony in his paintings.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 28, 2025

Yet pronk works carried deeper meanings as the earliest forms of vanitas, a genre that uses symbolism to convey the brevity of life and futility of pleasure.

From Salon • Mar. 10, 2024

And she picked up on the morbid side of me — I have a collection of hourglasses and vanitas things with skulls.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 18, 2017

Seen against the backdrop of Menshikov’s life story, the bust seems like an inadvertent vanitas, a work whose flamboyance somehow signals its subject’s fall from grace.

From New York Times • Dec. 30, 2011

Do any of you remember the mournful words with which one of our greatest modern writers of fiction closes his saddest, truest book: 'Ah! vanitas vanitatum!

From Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John by Maclaren, Alexander