A vanitas still-life

Simon Renard de Saint-André, painter of the Académie Royale and celebrated portraitist of Anne of Austria, Marie-Thérèse and Louis XIV, frequently devoted himself to still life paintings, with a strong interest in allegory and symbols of death and time. In the present painting, the frontispiece of the first volume of a French edition of Thomas à Kempis's (1380-1471) De imitatione Christi et contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi, the pinnacle of all the writings of the mystical German-Dutch school of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is juxtaposed with a peculiar and precious box, rare shells, small sculptures, pince-nez, a series of objects clearly referring to an amateur, in the loneliness of his silent study.
For a similar composition by the artist, see M. Faré, Le grand siècle de la nature morte en France: le XVIIe siècle, Fribourg and Paris, 1974, p. 176, illustrated.