Vanitas Still-Life

Harmen Steenwijck painted this around 1640 in Leiden, the Dutch university town, as a vanitas, a still life built to remind you that everything in it will pass. A skull sits at the center, tipped toward a spent lamp and an open watch: death and time in a single glance. The books and the lute stand for study and pleasure, both fleeting. One object fixes the exact moment, the ornate Japanese sword. The Dutch East India Company was then the only European trader allowed into Japan, so a Leiden painter could set an exotic blade on the table as a token of worldly wealth, the very kind of possession the picture warns against. A shaft of light picks out the skull and leaves the rest in shadow.