Have you ever considered a tutor for help with your homework? And if you want some help, ask for it not just post your homework question verbatim. Try a little disguise for a change wee if you can fool us.

"In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term vanitas itself refers to the arts, learning and time. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:2 from the Bible is often quoted in conjunction with this term. The Vulgate (Latin translation of the Bible) renders the verse as Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. The verse is translated as Vanity of vanities; all is vanity by the King James Version of the Bible, and Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless by the New International Version of the Bible. Paintings executed in the vanitas style are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, encouraging a sombre world view. Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death; rotten fruit, which symbolizes decay like ageing; bubbles, which symbolize the brevity of life and suddenness of death; smoke, watches, and hourglasses, which symbolize the brevity of life; and musical instruments, which symbolize brevity and the ephemeral nature of life. In the remarkable Transi of René de Chalons (illustration, left), the widow of René de Chalon, prince of Orange, who died in battle in 1544, aged 25, has asked the sculptor Ligier Richier to represent him offering his heart to God, in the condition he now is in, a few years after his death, set against the painted splendour of his former worldly estate. The first movement in composer Robert Schumann's 5 Pieces in a Folk Style, for Cello and Piano, Op. 103, is entitled Vanitas vanitatum. Mit Humor. The motto of the Harvard Lampoon magazine is Vanitas, a play on Harvard University's actual motto, Veritas (Truth)." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas

The primaray symbolsim of vanitas paintings, to put it bluntly is, "we're all gonna die"! Vanitas paintings are the most elegant and tasteful paintings in my opinion, that one can find throughout history. I am just now completing a class this summer, and my final will be done on Audrey Flack's-Wheel of Fortune; a photorealism vanitas done by an artist in our generation...... in case the original person who asked the question is CURIOUS. I think when one understands the true meaning of vanitas, then hopefully they will come to understand why it is so worth their while and time to find out the meaning of such important questions on their own. Hopefully they too will find the beauty in such things they obvioulsy feel are not important enought to find out for themselves; kind of ironic don't you think considering the meaning .....at least that is my hope for anonymous that asked this question.

I guess the meaning of the term "essay" is lost on you. Read about the subject and then put forward your own thoughts, not someone else's.

Forget about this account? http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/711485 Or maybe taking the same class? Curious how it's an EXACT duplicate...right down to the spelling, spacing, and lack of period at the end of the sentence. At any rate, iwnit provided you with a detailed anwer to the original question. And so did lifesaver17201