Peeter Sion

[3] The artist is known to have worked in Antwerp for the Forchondt workshop, one of the most important exporters of Flemish art to all corners of Europe.

[1] Peeter Sion was a painter of religious and mythological subjects, genre scenes and vanitas still lifes.

As is also common in the work of Francken, his compositions often include different sequences of the principal story in a single canvas.

The best known of these is the Vanitas still life with skull (At art dealer Bernheimer-Colnaghi, Munich/London) where the typical symbols of vanitas appear: a skull with a laurel crown, soap bubbles, an extinguished candle, an hour glass, a watch, a portrait of a woman, a wilted flower, books, cold cinders in a pot and an empty pipe.

On a paper resting against the books and pinned by the skull are written the words from Ecclesiastes 7:36 Memorare novissima, et in aeternum non peccabis (Whatever you do, remember that some day you must die.