Still Life with Skull, Sandglass, Books, and Artist’s Utensils ('Memento Mori. Finis Coronat Opus.')

This interior scene represents a Vanitas image, a genre which saw its peak of popularity in the first half of the 17th century in Holland. Most of these compositions are pure still lifes of specific objects symbolic of the transience of life, such as a skull and bones, an hourglass, a candle, a vase of flowers, sometimes insects. Hondius's engraving is more complex and rendered with remarkable mastery in the spatial relationships between the large variety of things depicted. The interior scene opens up to the external world at the sides: the bull's eye windows letting light in - clearly inspired by Dürer's Saint Jerome (see lots 78 & 79) - at left; and an open door through which we glimpse an outside staircase and two city palaces.
The Latin inscription Finis Coronat Opus ('The end crowns the work') is crucial to understand the meaning of this dense composition. In the foreground we see the scattered artist's tools, including two burins and a copperplate (engraved with the artist's monogram and a figure of Hercules), two sketchbooks, a palette, a board for the grinding and mixing of paints, and other utensils, whilst on the table a center, behind an easel holding a small panel and amongst other staple memento mori symbols, lies a skull crowned with a laurel wreath: it is through art alone that we can attain immortality.