Portrait of a young man with a skull

Frans Hals painted Portrait of a Young Man with a Skull around 1628, a vanitas portrait combining the conventional bourgeois format with the mortality symbol of the skull that the young man holds. The combination of portrait and memento mori was a standard Dutch device for investing the social genre of portraiture with moral content: the skull reminds the sitter and viewer that worldly success and personal identity are temporary. Hals's treatment is characteristic: the skull is present but not overly insisted upon, the face retaining its lively individuality even within the vanitas context. The young man's direct gaze invites comparison between his living vitality and the skull's mute reminder of its eventual conclusion.

The young man's vivid, alert expression contrasts with the lifeless skull, both rendered with Hals's characteristic directness, the warm flesh tones of the living face set against the pale bone of the memento mori.