Vanitas Print

$28.00

In the small, exacting world of the seventeenth-century still life, few painters balanced beauty and unease as deftly as Jan van Kessel. In this vanitas, literally, “emptiness”, roses bloom beside a skull, an hourglass measures the collapse of time, and soap bubbles drift, brief as thought. Every element whispers the same refrain: that the pleasures of the world are luminous precisely because they fade.

Van Kessel’s precision transforms the moral allegory into something tender. The skull gleams like marble; the petals are nearly translucent. Life and death are presented not as opposites, but as collaborators in a single, exquisite composition.

• 12" x 16" archival matte print • Paper thickness: 10.3 mil • Paper weight: 189 g/m² • Opacity: 94% • ISO brightness: 104% • Paper is sourced from Japan

In the small, exacting world of the seventeenth-century still life, few painters balanced beauty and unease as deftly as Jan van Kessel. In this vanitas, literally, “emptiness”, roses bloom beside a skull, an hourglass measures the collapse of time, and soap bubbles drift, brief as thought. Every element whispers the same refrain: that the pleasures of the world are luminous precisely because they fade.

Van Kessel’s precision transforms the moral allegory into something tender. The skull gleams like marble; the petals are nearly translucent. Life and death are presented not as opposites, but as collaborators in a single, exquisite composition.

• 12" x 16" archival matte print • Paper thickness: 10.3 mil • Paper weight: 189 g/m² • Opacity: 94% • ISO brightness: 104% • Paper is sourced from Japan