{"id":22,"date":"2006-02-15T18:44:50","date_gmt":"2006-02-15T18:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=22"},"modified":"2007-11-20T20:22:02","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T20:22:02","slug":"history-of-the-skull-as-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/02\/15\/history-of-the-skull-as-symbol\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the skull as symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.designboom.com\/history\/death.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/7.jpg\" alt=\"7.jpg\" id=\"image21\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still-life with a skull (vanitas) <em>by Philippe de Champaigne.<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>vanitas<\/strong><br \/>\nthink of the scene from shakespeare&#8217;s hamlet where the prince holds a skull of yorick, a former servant, bemoaning the pointlessness and temporary nature of worldly matters. certain themes characteristic of a specific philosophy have been commonly represented during an era, and an iconography has been developed to express them. an example is the still life vanitas vanitatum of the middle ages, a reminder of the transitory quality of earthly pleasure symbolized by a skull. pictorial arrangements are dealing with the vanity of the intellectual world (globe, books), and of the &#8216;vita voluptaria&#8217; (musical instruments, smoking implements). often painters continued the old tradition of including appropriate captions or texts on their pictures. the favourite was the admonition from ecclesiastes I: &#8216;vanity of vanities; all is vanity&#8217;. the transience of human existence is often brought out also by other symbols like the candle and the hourglass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Still-life with a skull (vanitas) by Philippe de Champaigne. vanitas think of the scene from shakespeare&#8217;s hamlet where the prince holds a skull of yorick, a former servant, bemoaning the pointlessness and temporary nature of worldly matters. certain themes characteristic of a specific philosophy have been commonly represented during an era, and an iconography has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/02\/15\/history-of-the-skull-as-symbol\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;History of the skull as symbol&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[445,500],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-design","tag-skulls","tag-william-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}