The stories of Lucifer and Narcissus , and others, attend to a pernicious aspect of vanity. In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one’s own abilities or attractiveness to others. In many religions vanity is considered a form of self-idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one’s own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God
Often we find an inscription on a scroll that reads Omnia Vanitas , a quote from the Latin translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Although that phrase, itself depicted in a type of still life, vanitas, originally referred not to obsession with one’s appearance, but to the ultimate fruitlessness of man’s efforts in this world, the phrase summarizes the complete preoccupation of the subject of the picture
Philosophically-speaking, vanity may refer to a broader sense of egoism and pride. “. ” One of Mason Cooley’s aphorisms is “Vanity well fed is benevolent. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality. Vanity hungry is spiteful
“The artist invites us to pay lip-service to condemning her,” writes Edwin Mullins, “while offering us full permission to drool over her. ” The theme of the recumbent woman often merged artistically with the non-allegorical one of a reclining Venus. She admires herself in the glass, while we treat the picture that purports to incriminate her as another kind of glass—a window—through which we peer and secretly desire her
Such artistic works served to warn viewers of the ephemeral nature of youthful beauty, as well as the brevity of human life and the inevitability of death
In early Christian teachings vanity is considered an example of pride, one of the seven deadly sins
A young woman holds a balance, symbolizing justice; she does not look at the mirror or the skull on the table before her. A painting attributed to Nicolas Tournier, which hangs in the Ashmolean Museum, is An Allegory of Justice and Vanity. In his table of the Seven Deadly Sins, Hieronymus Bosch depicts a bourgeois woman admiring herself in a mirror held up by a devil. Behind her is an open jewelry box. An optical illusion, the painting depicts what appears to be a large grinning skull. All is Vanity, by Charles Allan Gilbert , carries on this theme. Upon closer examination, it reveals itself to be a young woman gazing at her reflection in the mirror. Vermeer’s famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring is sometimes believed to depict the sin of vanity, as the young girl has adorned herself before a glass without further positive allegorical attributes
In Western art, vanity was often symbolized by a peacock, and in Biblical terms, by the Whore of Babylon. Other symbols of vanity include jewels, gold coins, a purse, and often by the figure of death himself. During the Renaissance, vanity was invariably represented as a naked woman, sometimes seated or reclining on a couch. In secular allegory, vanity was considered hi mom the minor vices. The mirror is sometimes held by a demon or a putto. She attends to her hair with comb and mirror