The centerpiece for this page is Simon Luttichuys's Still Life with a Skull, a ‘vanitas’ painting, a popular theme in the Dutch Renaissance, representing the transience of corporeal life compared to the enduring quality of art and letters. A partially peeled lemon with the coiled skin is a common vanitas icon, as is the skull. Luttichuys’ rendition is interesting for its careful composition of rectangular and circular objects.

The circular objects: globe, orb, skull and head delineate a triangular pattern in the design, while the square forms: paintings and books, draw an inverted triangular. These two triangles intersect and inscribe a star, a kabalistic motif. The circles depict organic objects and the squares portray things made by human endeavor. These forms imply the mind/body dichotomy in the theory/practice question.

For this composition of the letter “Q”, Luttichuys’ painting is cropped into the shape of ellipse and the dangling page of the book in the foreground of the painting is cut and re-attached to form the tail of the “Q”. This design follows Luttichuys, by arranging additional square and round shaped cut-outs of Quarle’s book and daVinci’s sketch of an embryo. Images of birth and death surround the implicit presence of desire, evident as the expression of physical forms. The desire for digital technology is ironically written in an antique font in the poem.

The facsimile page from Quarle’s book Emblemes describes the soul encased in the cage of the body. Another theme of Emblemes is the vanity of flesh. Quarle’s Address to the Reader declares that all physical forms are representations of the divine:

Before the knowledge of letters God was known by hieroglyphics; And indeed what are the Heavens, the Earth, nay every Creature, the hieroglyphics and emblems of His Glory.

Quarle’s book, one of the best sellers of the 1600s with several printings, is representative of the growing availability of printed books for the early modern consuming public. Although, it has a moral theme the book is a form of entertainment. The combination of poetry and pictures/emblems is derived from established formats of prayer books and medieval manuscripts. As a ‘best-seller’ it is likely that Emblemes was a popular cultural item that influenced William Blake’s elaborate book-making.

The poem on the page, “Extinction,” contemplates fear, death and desire in literature. Quarles’ ‘worm’ in Emblemes is a 17th century literary variant of the vanitas theme, standing for the transience of mortal life and flesh. John Donne’s poem “The Flea” depicts the animal conditions of the human body. Prohibited desire and pleasure: sadism, bestiality, necrophilia and incest, are the theme of George Bataille’s My Mother, and Bataille’s boy, in the poem refers to the son in his book. According to Bataille, eroticism is grounded in fear and the ultimate dread/desire is fear of death.

Luttichuys’ painting is altered with poem text written on the wall. Birth and death, as the tension of competing desire are represented in the vanitas theme and the phrase, “sex is born of extinction’s anxiety”. The juxtaposition of early modern and post-modern visual artifacts portrays differences in the historic representation of an aspect of human embodiment.

The poem “Quick” inserted into Luttichuys’ painting is quoted for readability:

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