Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation is a 1480s painting by the German-born citizen of Bruges, Hans Memling.
Neither the order of the panels from left to right, nor the coupling of the pairs of paintings, is known with certainty; and because of the work's theological content, it is disputed if it was designed as a triptych or as a polyptych.
Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation was probably used for private devotion, as a domestic altarpiece that could also be carried with its owner.
The proponents of the theory that a fourth recto-verso panel is missing suggest that it could have shown the Virgin Mary (responding to her son depicted as a Salvator Mundi but also with attributes of a Christ in Majesty, such as the crown) on one side, and Adam on the other (responding to Eve, depicted as the allegorical figure of Vanity).
Vanity (which may also represent Luxuria) and Death share aesthetic and thematic parallels, not least in the very prominent genital area, a fact that has prompted the tenants of the triptych hypothesis to dismiss the idea that Vanity/Luxuria should have been paired with another painting instead.
It references the 2009 book Collection du musée des Beaux-Arts – Peinture flamande et hollandaise XVème-XVIIIème siècle but erroneously quotes pages 49–53 instead of 51–55.