Sevillian or Granada school; end of the XVII century.

Sevillian or Granada School; late seventeenth century.
"Infant Jesus as memento Mori".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 63 x 89 cm; 74 x 102 cm (frame).
In a sober and silent interior rests the figure of a small child who, asleep, delicately rests his hands on a skull. The apparently serene scene is crossed by a disturbing symbolic tension: the innocence of childhood is inevitably altered by the presence of death, which insinuates itself as a persistent shadow over the candor and fragility of life. The ample space surrounding the figure reinforces this sense of solitude and reflection, turning the interior into an environment conducive to meditation.
The image refers to a specific artistic genre that emerged in the 16th century, whose meaning can be summarized in the idea of "as we are born, so we die". This motif was particularly widespread in Flanders and Germany and is closely linked to the development of vanitas still lifes, so characteristic of northern European visual culture. In these representations, artists insistently explored the transience of existence and the inevitable presence of death as a common destiny.
Within the broad universe of vanities, one of the fundamental axes was precisely the reflection on the passage of time and the fragility of all human achievement. These works denounce the relativity of knowledge, the illusion of permanence and the vanity of the human race, inexorably subjected to expiration and death. Their intellectual conception is deeply linked to the famous passage from Ecclesiastes: "vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas" ("vanity of vanities, all is vanity"), which forcefully summarizes the moral and philosophical background of this type of images.