Uselessness of Pleasure
Music and Vanity of Life
Abstract
The concept vanitas has been present to the course of History of Art, being the base of a gender whose main message was about despising earthly life, because our only certainity is our own death. This gender was developed due to a variety of simbolic objects, such as skull, flowers, clocks and last but not least, musical instruments. This article will try to demonstrate the importance of this gender and its elements in the Middle Ages and Modern Age, focusing on the presence of musical instruments. To finish, it will be showed the musical iconographical analysis of two vanitates paintings belonging to the so called Spanish Golden Age, as an example of another point of view to analize this kind of pictures.
##submission.format##
##submission.crossmark##
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Eikon Imago is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
