Niccolò Renieri (1591–1667)
»Vanity-Pandora«

Oil on canvas

Upon completion of his training in Rome, the painter, a native of northern France, settled in Venice in 1624/25. This painting combines two themes. The first is vanity, the transience and insignificance of worldly wealth and fame, symbolised by gold coins, jewels, a mask and a skull (Memento mori). The other is expressed in the lifted cover of a pitcher, an allusion to the myth of Pandora: As the first woman created by the Greek gods, Pandora, overcome by curiosity, opened a box that had been entrusted to her and thus allowed all of the plagues and evils it contained to escape into the world. [ Rv ]