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Meaning of vánitas




Pedro Crespo Refoyo

vánitas
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VANITAS is a Latin cultism, which comes from the same term of the same name, whose meaning is vanity, pride, excess admiration and feeling paid for by a person, in a high sense. But the strict meaning of the term vanitas refers to a type of paintings or other pictorial works, and sculptural art, related to death, the end of time, temporal fleetingness and everything that criticizes the mundane and lacking in perpetuity. It corresponds to the seventeenth century, known as the Baroque. In these paintings you see skulls, books, cetros, tiaras and other objects of power and wealth, such as jewels, terrache spheres, as well as biblical quotations and animals related to death, such snakes, flies, rats, toads and other scoundrels. Some synonyms, words or similar expressions may be still lifes, paintings or objects reminiscent of temporal fleetingness, " , memento mori" , , , , ' , remember that you must die' , ),

  




John Rene Plaut

VNITAS of the Latin expression vanitas vanitatum , et omnia vanitas , of the Ecclesiastes ( 1 , 2 ), which means vanity of vanities, everything is vanity; subgenre of still life, which is imbued with symbolisms and allegories and which highlights the reality of death as an inexorable destiny, usually based on the representation of skulls, but also, sometimes, skeletons. It is used in feminine and without accent, the vain.

  



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