Decorating with Death | The Depressing World of VANITAS Paintings (Memento Mori Part I)

It seems to be generally true that anytime you encounter a religion, you will find at some point within its vast and complex framework of metaphysics, morality, and rituals, a place in that framework that seeks to come to terms in some way with death and to remind people of the basic fact of death. When you encounter a culture in which religion has become foundational, you will find artistic representations of these metanarratives of life and death, begging and end, and the (often transitory) nature of reality. I mentioned Buddhist sand mandalas in my video on Unus Annus. There’s also Japanese death poems and the Mexican day of the dead. Artifacts and festivals of this nature are found the whole world over. But In this video I want to focus on European art, particulaellu on Vanitas Paintings. A vanitas painting is a work of art that highlights the transitory nature of the things or people that it portrays in order to remind us of the brevity of life and bring us into greater harmony with the nature of lif