Vanitas (Latin: 'emptiness' or 'vanity') is a category of symbolic still-life painting that proliferated in Dutch Golden Age art, particularly in Leiden and Haarlem in the 17th century. The paintings assemble objects whose symbolic meanings collectively evoke the transience of earthly life: skulls (mortality), hourglasses (the passage of time), snuffed candles (extinguished life), flowers (beauty that fades), soap bubbles (the insubstantiality of existence), musical instruments (pleasures that pass). The genre derives from the biblical book Ecclesiastes: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Pieter Claesz and Willem Claesz Heda were its principal practitioners. The paintings were collected by wealthy merchants who decorated their offices with meditations on mortality — a daily reminder that even commerce served a larger, finite context.