3-035-668 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Two Boys with a Bladder, 1767. The painting depicts two young boys, boldly lit by a concealed candle, inflating a pig's bladder. At the time, animal bladders served as toys, either inflated and tossed like balloons or filled with dried peas and shaken like rattles. In European art, bladders often functioned as symbolic variants on soap bubbles, fragile playthings signifying the brevity of human life and the transience of human achievement.