Vanitas is a genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldy desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory items. The genre began in the 16th century and continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type of allegorical art representing a higher ideal. It was a sub-genre of painting heavily employed by Dutch painters during the Baroque period (c.1585–1730). Spanish painters working at the end of the Spanish Golden Age also created vanitas paintings.
Vanitas by Antonio de Pereda
Vanitas Still Life with Self-Portrait, Pieter Claesz, 1628
Vanitas painting, self-portrait c. 1610, most probably by Clara Peeters
Great Vanity, Sebastian Stoskopff, 1641
Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century, it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but originally meant considering one's own capabilities and that God's help was not needed, i.e. unjustified boasting; although glory is now seen as having a predominantly positive meaning, the Latin term from which it derives, gloria, roughly means boasting, and was often used as a negative criticism.
"Vanitas" (Latin for vanity) by Léon Bazille Perrault, 1886
Nosce Te Ipsum (Allegory of Vanity), engraving by Jacob Neefs after a drawing by Jacob Jordaens
In this painting Daydreams by Thomas Couture, the vice of vanity is shown through a boy blowing bubbles. The Walters Art Museum.