The images here—paintings, symbols, and studies of contrast represent the framework behind the Vanitas’ creation. Life and death, permanence and decay, motion and stillness: these are not contradictions, but mirrors. Just as the painters of the 17th century captured the tension between beauty and brevity, Arena captures it in steel.
The watch becomes a living metaphor, a piece of art that measures its own impermanence. You don’t wear the Vanitas to deny time; you wear it to acknowledge it. To remember that mastery, like life itself, is measured not in how long it lasts, but in how intentionally it’s lived.
Pictured artists:
Simon Renard de Saint-Andre 1613 - 1677
Adriaen Coorte 1665 –1 707
Flemish School, Circa 1620's
Philippe de Champaigne 1602 - 1674
