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Vanitas Still Life with the Spinario
Also titled Vanitasstilleven met de Doornuittrekker
Pieter Claesz (Berchem, ca. –1660)
1628
- Medium
- panel, oil paint (paint)
- Classification
- painting
- Dimensions
- support: height 70.5 cm x width 80.5 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
About this work
Appearances can be deceptive – certainly in painting, which gives only an impression of reality. Here Claesz presents the study materials of an educated painter: books, drawings, armour, musical instruments and a plaster cast of the Spinario, a famous antique sculpture of a boy extracting a thorn from his foot. On the table are a paintbrush and a palette, along with bones and a skull. The message is clear: the world is mere illusion and transience (vanitas).
