Harmen Steenwijck's uncle, David Bailly, is often credited with inventing the artistic genre of vanitas, focusing on the transience of life.

[1] Radiographic analysis of the work revealed that Steenwijck had originally included a bust of a man crowned with a wreath, which he painted over.

[1] Like most vanitas paintings, it contains deep religious overtones and was created to both remind viewers of their mortality (a memento mori) and to indicate the transient nature of material objects.

In the 2016 book Art and Music in the Early Modern Period, Katherine A. McIver wrote: The image "presents a jumble of exquisite possessions ... Each of these abandoned, hollow things receives its temporary luster from a higher source."

[7][8] In 2001, the authors of Vermeer and the Delft School critiqued the painting by saying that the surface textures of the objects are contrasting and the light is harsh.

They also suggested that the painting encourages the viewer to pursue an active life, so that one may even reach a degree of immortality through one's accomplishments.