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Allegory on the Brevity of Life
Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (Dutch, 1562–1638)
1617
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 47 cm, width 58.5 cm
- Culture
- Dutch
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
A young couple, virtually naked, sit in a natural setting, almost like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Absorbed by vanity, they are lost in contemplating their own reflection in a mirror held up to them by a bearded man. The man is Father Time. We see something the young couple do not. Behind them an arrow points directly towards them. The arrow of Cupid? No, of Death. Here Death has not been personified as a skeleton with all its bones picked clean; it is a far more uncanny apparition: a so-called “transi” – a half-rotted corpse. In its own day the painting served to remind observers of the inevitability of death: it comes to us all, young and old, rich and poor, and this is intended to urge us to live in accordance with Christian virtues.
