Vanitas handmade silver bracelet, adjustable skull cuff jewelry

 

 

Instagram: @moonandserpent

 

Vanitas means "vanity" in Latin and refers to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with still-life painting in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods. Vanitas themes were common in medieval funerary art, with most surviving examples in sculpture. By the 15th century these could be extremely morbid and explicit, reflecting an increased obsession with death and decay also seen in the Ars moriendi, the Danse Macabre, and the overlapping motif of the Memento mori.