Self-Portrait with a Vanitas Still- Life

This is the only recorded self-portrait by Edwart Collier, inspired by his Leiden forebear David Bailly’s Self-Portrait with Vanitas Symbols. The still-life arrangement, with a violin preventing a musical score from falling off the table while resting on a closed book and holding open the pages of another, in this case an early 17th century description of the city of Leiden, with a Roemer to the left and a globe behind, is one often repeated by Collier. The musical score is from Jan van Eyck’s Der Fluyten Lusthof, published in Utrecht in 1646, which is for solo flute, the instrument that the erudite Collier has placed resting upon it.