An Allegory of Vanity

This early painting was executed shortly after David Teniers II became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke and is remarkable for its divergence from the usually monochrome genre scenes that prevailed in Teniers’ production in the 1630s. According to Margret Klinge, Teniers is here ‘addressing himself to an educated public whose humanistic schooling will enable it to decode such an allegory, with its many explicatory attributes, and to grasp its meaning’ (loc. cit.). Teniers, in turn, demonstrated his own position as a cultivated artist by turning to such an erudite subject. He also shows his awareness of recent trends in Flemish painting by employing the brightly colored palette of fashionable artists like Frans Francken II and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

An elegant young woman is seated at a table, pensively resting her head in her left hand while holding a peacock feather in her right. Her melancholic attitude marks her as the embodiment of vain beauty, an idea which is reinforced by the various gold objects, jewelry and freshly starched lace collar strewn across the draped table. On the ground a globe and astrolabe reference scientific inquiry, while earthly power is alluded to through the large flag and armor heaped in the lower right foreground. Various other painted details – skates, sweets, drink, card games, dice, musical scores, instruments and fireworks – allude to the illusory diversions of daily life.

The ultimately ineffectual nature of these digressions is referenced through the inclusion of a chained monkey wearing the multi-colored costume of a jester and symbolizing folly. The monkey, known for his unbridled passion, looks through a spyglass telescope, evidently a quixotic attempt to read the future in the stars. The futility of human endeavors is made explicit through details like the snuffed-out candles in the chandelier and the bouquet of flowers, which will soon wilt. The theatrical masks in the foreground are probably also a subtle rebuke to those who seek fleeting gains by putting on airs, a point which is also made through the inclusion of the boys blowing bubbles at far left.

Despite the painting’s learned allusions, Teniers evidently could not fully free himself from his interest in humble genre scenes. At upper right along the blank wall he included a rustic barn interior with a man defecating by Cornelis Saftleven, today in the collection of the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin (fig. 1). Intriguingly, the painting was probably at the time in Peter Paul Rubens’ collection (see Belkin and Healy, op. cit., p. 213). While Saftleven was from Rotterdam, he worked in Antwerp between 1632 and 1634 and collaborated with Rubens there. Saftleven’s painting illustrates the Dutch proverb ‘Dit lijf, wat ist, als stanck en mist?’ (‘What is this body but stench and shit?’), a decidedly crass take on Teniers’ central message.