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This still-life by Antonio de Pereda, a Spanish painter and expert in the genre of Vanitas, presents all of the symbols alluding to the theme: skulls, fading flowers that are past their bloom, playing cards, luxury items and weaponry. The beautiful and contemplative figure of the angel, points to them, inviting to renounce them and to apply the right values in view of achieving salvation. Even the vast empire ruled by the great Charles V – whose portrait hangs above the model of the globe - is destined to vanish in time, while the holy kingdom and its eternal justice will triumph definitively, as revealed in the large painting of the Last Judgement, unveiled by a drape in the background.
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