Vanitas Still Life

The Vanitas Still Life is an oil painting on panel created by Evert Collier in 1675. The work measures 19.5 cm in height and 17 cm in width. It currently resides in the collection of the Mauritshuis.

The painting depicts a traditional arrangement of symbols including a human skull, an hourglass, a rose, and various writing implements such as a quill and inkwell.

Evert Collier's 1675 oil painting Vanitas Still Life is held in the collection of the Mauritshuis. The work, executed on a panel measuring 19.5 by 17 units, depicts traditional vanitas symbols including a human skull, hourglass, and extinguished rose alongside scholarly items like an inkwell and books.

While the painting is part of the museum's permanent holdings, the available records do not list specific inventory numbers or detail a history of temporary exhibitions for this piece.

Evert Collier's Vanitas Still Life (1675) exemplifies the vanitas genre through its meticulously arranged symbolism of transience, including a human skull, hourglass, and wilted rose, reflecting contemporary Dutch Republic anxieties about mortality and material excess. Scholarship emphasizes its technical mastery and moralizing intent within the broader context of 17th-century Dutch still life, where such works served as visual meditations on the ephemerality of worldly pleasures. The painting's provenance at the Mauritshuis underscores its recognized significance within Dutch Golden Age collections, though its critical reception history remains less documented than its stylistic and thematic influence on later vanitas traditions.

Evert Collier’s Vanitas Still Life, executed in oil around 1675, exemplifies the Dutch Golden Age’s fascination with mortality. The composition gathers a skull, hourglass, open book, quill, and a single pink rose on a darkened tabletop, all rendered with meticulous detail to underscore the fleeting nature of existence.