VREDEMAN DE VRIES, Hans
(b. 1527, Leeuwarden, d. ca. 1606, Antwerpen)

Architectural Caprice

1596-98
Oil on panel, 65 x 89 cm
Private collection

The picture shows an architectural caprice of a palace with figures and allegorical scene. Besides the rich architectural inventiveness, the genre scene figures add an extra element of charm to the work. The figures are judiciously distributed among the architectural elements: some are dancing while some others are embracing (kissing each other), playing an instrument of music, attending a splendid banquet. All these scenes describe an aspect of the elegant courtly life of the time. The implicit moral message tells about the vanity of short-lived sensual pleasures, which the hourglass brandished by the skeleton above the two lovers in the foreground explicitly underlines.




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