2-999-666 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Allegory on Human Life, c1658-1660. Garlands frame and complement a still life of objects underlining the brevity of human life: a skull, a burning candle, and an hourglass. The human skull had long been a subject for Flemish painters, as in St. Jerome Meditating on a Skull from the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst; indeed many devout Chrstians in the 1600s kept a human skull for their own devotions, as the Human Skull in the Collector's Study. The combination of a skull with the candle and hourglass encourages a meditation on the miracle of Christ’s Resurrection and its promise of eternal life to the faithful.