Vanitas Still Life

By Jacques de Gheyn II, 1603.

 

De Gheyn was a wealthy amateur who is best known as a brilliant draftsman, but he also painted and engraved. This panel is generally considered to be the earliest known independent still life painting of a vanitas subject. The skull, large bubble, cut flowers, and smoking urn refer to the brevity of life, while images floating in the bubble—such as a wheel of torture and a leper’s rattle—Spanish coins, and a Dutch medal refer to human folly. The figures flanking the arch above are Democritus and Heraclitus, the laughing and weeping philosophers of ancient Greece.

The Archer and the Milkmaid, ca. 1610

Andries Stock (Netherlandish, ca. 1580–1648), after Jacques de Gheyn II (Netherlandish, 1565–1629)

The well-bred artist Jacques de Gheyn treats the subject of milkmaids with more circumspection than is found in popular prints of the period. An archer with a bulging codpiece aims his crossbow right at the viewer, like Cupid hitting us between the eyes. The archer and his helpful companion (who wears his hat) reappear as lovers in the left background, where a stallion (presumably) ogles a mare. De Gheyn refers to slang expressions such as "milking" and "shooting your bolt." The inscriptions were probably added by the publisher. The Latin verse lamely alludes to male anatomy while the Dutch text warns maidens of men with crossbows cocked.

The slang word melken (to milk), meaning to attract or lure. The term's origin is more or less explained in an anonymous Dutch book of 1624, Nova poemata (subtitled "New Low German poems and riddles"), in which a woman in the act of milking a cow ("A sinewy thing she has seized with joy," and so on) is compared with grabbing a man's . . . attention.