Francis Borgia was born into what we would today call privilege. On his mother’s side, he was the great-grandson of the Catholic King Ferdinand II of Aragon, connecting him to the Spanish royal family. On his father’s side, he was the great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI, making him one of the infamous—but extremely powerful and wealthy—Borgias. At seventeen, Francis was sent to the court of his great-uncle Emperor Charles V. The charming young man soon won the admiration and affection of the emperor and his beautiful, pious wife, Empress Isabella of Portugal. At the empress’ request, he married Leonor of Castro, was made a marquis, and became a close advisor and friend of the emperor. Francis’ rise was not due exclusively to his personal charisma and talents; he was also devout and virtuous in a time when royal courts were outwardly religious but often rife with vice. This endeared him to the empress, whose genuine piety was well known.
In 1539, the empress died at the age of 35. Charles V was so devastated by her death that he shut himself up in a monastery for months, and Francis was tasked with escorting her body to her final resting place in the Royal Chapel of Granada. After a journey of several days in the hot Castilian summer, they arrived in Granada, where Francis was asked to identify the body. When the coffin was opened, the young Francis was horrified by what he saw. The decomposing corpse bore no resemblance with the Isabella Francis had known in life, a woman thought by many to be the most beautiful in the world (Titian’s portrait of her supports this claim). Francis realized in that moment that all earthly power, wealth, and honor is dust. After his wife’s death some years later, he renounced his titles, riches, and position and joined the Jesuits, no longer wishing to serve a mortal emperor but rather the resurrected King of kings. His jolting encounter with death set him on the path to Christian perfection. He was canonized in 1670.
From his face-to-face meeting with death, St. Francis Borgia was led neither to fear nor despair but to wisdom, mirroring what the Psalmist once asked for: “Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart” (Ps. 90:12). This wisdom of heart is what the Church wants for the faithful when she reminds them on Ash Wednesday, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Even the pagans had a sense that awareness of death could bring about wisdom. When triumphantly processing into Rome, a victorious general would be accompanied by a slave who would whisper into his ear, “Memento mori,” “Remember that you will die.” What the Christian centuries brought to these reflections on death was hope—something lacking among the pagans. The Christian, unlike the pagan, can confidently say, “Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage” (Ps. 23:4).
By contemplating death, they beckon viewers to rightly order their lives.
Around the time St. Francis Borgia was serving the emperor on the Spanish side of the Hapsburg Empire, the genre of vanitas paintings was coming into existence on the Dutch and Flemish side. In front of that open coffin, St. Francis Borgia was seized by the truth of the famous verse from the book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Eccl. 1:1–2), not in an abstract, philosophical sense, but in a profoundly existential way. It changed the course of his life. Vanitas paintings aim at eliciting a similar response from the viewer. They seek to help us realize that the things we eagerly strive after and cling to are fleeting and will—like our very bodies—turn to dust. They offer a view of the goods of this world from the perspective of eternity. By contemplating death, they beckon viewers to rightly order their lives.
Vanitas paintings are considered a subgenre within the still life genre. One normally finds in them a heap of inanimate objects, each one an allegory. Some of the objects stand for death and the shortness of life; others symbolize the various goods and pleasures the world offers while pointing toward the foolishness of pursuing them when we will take none of them to the grave. Death is always present, represented by a skull which might lie centrally in the composition or lurking in the background, as if surveying its hoard. We are shown the fleetingness of life in extinguished (or about to be extinguished) candles; in flowers marred by wilting petals; in fruit embittered by decay; in bubbles floating gracefully through the air, only to vanish the moment we touch them. To add a sense of urgency, the hourglass is always present, reminding us, with every falling grain of sand, of the approaching end.
But the vanitas are not nihilistic. They were, from the beginning, a form of Christian art and are to be read in the light of Scripture. Their fundamental message is Christ’s: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19–20). They are not a rejection of the goods of the world as such. What they warn against is a disordered prioritizing of the things of this world over what is of ultimate meaning. That is why the objects are fittingly displayed in a disordered heap. They present pictorially what Christ commanded: “Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides” (Matt. 6:33).
As the viewer’s eyes jump from one object to another, different Scripture verses are recalled. Portraits of spouses and family members remind the viewer that though the family is a great good, “if any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Coins, jewels, pearls, and other signs of wealth inevitably bring to mind that “you cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Even the goods of knowledge and art—represented by old books, broken sculptures, and musical instruments—must be rightly ordered: “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1–2). Crowns and royal scepters, bishops’ mitres and croziers, warn the powerful of this world that “whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant” (Matt. 20:26). Summing all these up, a globe provides a not-so-subtle reminder that “what profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mark 8:36).
What they warn against is a disordered prioritizing of the things of this world over what is of ultimate meaning.
Then, there is the mirror, a traditional symbol of vanity, its primary signification being that “charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting” (Prov. 31:30). However, in many vanitas paintings, it takes on a different function. In Jan van Hemessen’s Vanity (1535–1540), for instance, an angel holds a mirror reflecting a skull. This panel is thought to be part of a diptych, with its companion likely portraying the commissioner of the work. The mirror, then, was held up so he could see his own mortality. This same use of the mirror is found in Death and the Knight, attributed to Pedro de Camprobin, where a young gentleman looks upon a skeletal reflection of himself. The vanitas painting serves as a mirror in which we see our mortality more clearly.
Most vanitas paintings remain firmly within the still life genre, with some being of beautiful simplicity, such as Pieter Claesz’s Vanitas Still Life, while others approach the theme with more exuberant imagery, like Pieter Boels’ Allegory of the Vanities of the World, where a large pile of exotic items—from turbans to classical statues—is set within a crumbling ancient temple. However, the more interesting examples are those that drift away from the genre, or at least cross its boundaries. Judith Leyster’s The Last Drop delivers its message with an irony (and almost playfulness) not found in more restrained examples. The scene shows a skeleton holding an hourglass and skull, standing amid two men merrily drinking what the viewer sees will be their last drop.
It was among the Spanish that this genre-bending practice developed most fully. Antonio de Pereda’s The Knight’s Dream shows a young man, elegantly dressed but asleep, while an angel tries to draw his attention to the emptiness of his pursuits, which are all laid out in front of him, the warning seemingly unheeded. Juan de Valdés Leal’s two paintings in the chapel of the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville also remain within the vanitas genre while pushing its boundaries. In In Ictu Oculi (“In the Blink of an Eye”), death takes a more active role. She stands over a pile of earthly goods, staring down the viewer, while extinguishing a candle with her bony hand. Its companion piece, Finis Gloriae Mundi (“End of the World’s Glory”), shows several open coffins with corpses in varying degrees of decomposition: a bishop, a knight, and, in the back, a pauper. Above them hovers the hand of Christ holding a scale where vices and devotions are weighed. After death will come judgment and—this being a painting of the Catholic Counter-Reformation—it is up to the viewer, with God’s grace, to live a life of charity that will lead him to heaven.
One also finds in the Spanish vanitas a more explicit insistence on the superfluity of worldly power. In Antonio de Pereda’s Allegory of Vanity, the angel looks directly at the viewer, pointing to a globe with one hand and holding an image of emperor Charles V on the other. By the time this painting was made (1632), not only had Charles V been long dead but his empire—in which “the sun never set”—had already fractured. By 1556, Charles had abdicated all the thrones he had once possessed, returned to Spain, and retired to a monastery. Leaving aside all worldly possessions and pomp, he clung to the crucifix his beloved wife had held on her deathbed and died in 1558.
The emperor’s final days followed the path that vanitas paintings invite viewers to take, one which his saintly nephew had already taken. There is a painting by Antonio Palomino (St. Francis Borgia Kneeling Before the Body of Queen Isabella of Spain Before Joining the Jesuit Order), that, though not a vanitas painting, comes close to the genre. In it, a richly clad young Francis Borgia stares in shock at the crowned skull of his great-aunt. An angel points toward the Christogram IHS: his calling to enter the Jesuits. In his experience of this real life vanitas, St. Francis Borgia took to heart the message of all vanitas paintings: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt. 13:44).
