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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page paper which examines the evolution of Vanitas paintings from their Dutch beginnings, their post-Impressionist period, Surrealist incarnations, and their twentieth-century American representation. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGvanitas.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
rooted within the religious, philosophical, and cultural tapestry of seventeenth-century Europe. The earliest connection is between the Calvinist scholars assembled at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and
the artistic representation of images that emphasize the transitory nature of life (Leppert 57). The first of these Vanitas still-lifes appeared in approximately 1620, which was around the time
the Twelve-Years Truce ended and when the death and destruction that accompanied war weighed heavily on everyones minds (Kahr 196). This, followed shortly thereafter by a devastating plague, which
killed more than 14,500 people in the city of Leiden alone in 1635, were responsible for creating a form of artistic expression that, according to historian Richard D. Leppert,
"intended to encourage the observer to contemplate the frailty and brevity of life: human skulls, instruments for measuring time (clocks, watches, the hourglass), candles burning or extinguished but still smoking,
soap bubbles that exist only for an instant, flowers at their height of bloom and about to fade, and ripe fruit about to rot" (57-58). As the style progressed,
Vanitas paintings frequently featured objects that evoked images of the souls eternal qualities while at the same time contrasting the mortality of the human body. In Leiden, the first
important Vanitas painter was David Bailly (1584-1657), and later Pieter Claesz (c. 1596-1661) began to incorporate some Vanitas elements to his "Breakfast" canvases (Kahr 197). It was Claeszs The
Still-Life with Skull (1630) that truly characterized the genre for all future painters, with its ivory-colored skull, a watch, an oil lamp, and an empty glass, designed to represent "the
brevity of life on earth" (Kahr 198). The earliest Vanitas paintings were less orderly, with frequent movement so as to accentuate the forces of nature over which a human
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