A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are vanitas still lifes, a common genre in the Netherlandish art of the 16th and 17th centuries; they have also been created at other times and in other media and genres.

The Latin word vanitas (from the Latin adjective vanus 'empty') means 'emptiness', 'futility', or 'worthlessness'. The traditional Christian view was meant that earthly goods and pursuits are transient and worthless. It alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8, where vanitas translates the Hebrew word hevel, which also includes the concept of transitoriness.

Vanitas themes were common in the medieval funerary art, with most surviving examples in sculpture. By the 15th century, these could be extremely morbid and explicit, reflecting an increased obsession with death and decay also seen in the Ars Moriendi, the Danse Macabre, and the overlapping motif of the Memento mori. From the Renaissance, such motifs gradually became more indirect and, as the still-life genre became popular, found there a permanent home till nowadays. Paintings executed in the vanitas style were supposed to remind viewers of the futility of pleasure, transience of life, and inevitability of death. They also provided a moral justification for painting attractive objects.

In 16th-century poet, Sir Philip Sidney used this name for the subject of his collection of sonnets 'Astrophel and Stella'. As a given name it was rarely used until the 19th century. One Latin term for the Virgin Mary is "Stella Maris" meaning "star of the sea." The Spanish Estella, and thus the English and French Estelle, also derive from "stella" which is Latin for "star."

St. Jerome was doing a bit of translating (as he was oft to do) and translated Mary’s Hebrew name Miryam, which means drop of the sea, in the Latin Stilla Maris. Either due to a peasant dialect or a transcription error, Stilla became Stella and Mary went from a drop in the ocean to the star of the sea.

But it's good news. Stella is also a comet! Comets, before astronomers, such as Edmund Halley, increased our understanding of them, were held in awe and often viewed as bad omens. They have been blamed for events such as earthquakes, outbreaks of plague, wars and other disasters. This destructive influence can perhaps explain why skeletons are depicted in this cometary tract from 1607. The original woodcut illustration from the title page of the tract (or booklet) is much smaller than the reproduced image here.

Dance Macabre. The play of imagery and meanings encapsulated into complex geometry. The main characters, anatomical angels are inspired by anatomical books of late renaissance. Anatomical angels personify the outrages of war and, at the same time, the spirit aspiring to light and peace. Skulls, fractured bodies, and bones are inscribed into the intricate ornaments to reflect the specific Baroque view of the horrors of war. Remember, Barocco was conceived during the war.