Carel Fonteyn

These philosophical notions are expressed through stock symbols such as skulls, empty wine glasses, extinguished candles, empty shells, wilted flowers, dead animals, smoking utensils, clocks, mirrors, books, dice, playing cards, hourglasses, musical mucical instruments and scores, painter's tools, various expensive or exclusive objects such as jewelry.and rare shells.

[7][8] Vanitas paintings are informed by a Christian understanding of the world as a temporary place of ephemeral pleasures and torments from which humanity's only hope of escape is through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ.

[9] An example of a vanitas still life by Fonteyn is the Vanitas still life with flowers, a skull, hourglass, conch shell and silver jug on a partially draped table (signed and indistinctly dated lower centre on the parchment: Nicolaes van verendael / anno 1680, sold at Sotheby's on 7–10 December 2016 in London lot 20 as by Nicolaes van Verendael and sold at Sotheby's on 6 July 2017 in London lot 118 as attributed to Carel Fonteyn).

The text on the parchment reads as follows: Een mensch vander vrouwen geboren corten tyt levende vervult met veel allendichheden (Man is born from a woman and lives for a short time a life full of misery).

[10] The Vanitas still life with skull, playing cards, candle and flowers (signed on lower left: C L. Fonteyn, f, sold at Stockholms Stads Auktionsverk on 8 December 2010 in Stockholm lot 118) is a much starker picture that is made up of only a few of the typical Vanitas symbols which are shown in close-up and cramped together in the canvas.