Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas

In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil, and Vanity.
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Fashion comes and goes like ocean tides;
And ere one style dies,
Another trend shall rise;
That, sinking soon into the grave,
Others succeed, like wave on wave;

Part of the poem "Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas."
by Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
(freely rendered)

In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting especially associated with Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. By the 16th century, flowers would appear (again) as symbols of the seasons. Starting in Roman times is the tradition of using symbols of mortality, transience, and earthly remains. These so-called vanitas images have been re-interpreted through the last 400 years of art history, starting with Dutch painters around 1600. It is from these paintings that the Gardener took his inspiration for this Garden of Adin Vanitas Vanitatum.

Click here to see a close-up of this beautiful Dutch rose cut diamonds brooch.

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