# Allegory on the Brevity of Life

- By: Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (Dutch, 1562–1638)
- Date: 1617
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: height 47 cm, width 58.5 cm
- Culture: Dutch
- Museum: [SMK – National Gallery of Denmark](https://open.smk.dk/artwork/image/KMSsp341)
- Rights: [Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/smk-jpg/a0de69fb-391b-4576-9afe-ccde0f9519dd.jpg
- Who can see it: Adult profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.