Title: Bubbles and Pearls. A Baroque Allegory by Karel Du Jardin, 1663An analysis of the oil painting Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles. Allegory on the Transitoriness and the Brevity of Life (in the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen), signed and dated 1663 by the Dutch painter Karel Du Jardin (1626–1678), shows how two iconographical types, that of Fortune/Nemesis and that of a boy blowing soap bubbles are combined to form a new invention. The essay explores how Du Jardin’s painting expands and nuances the allegorical meaning of Vanitas by this combination of well-known visual sources. The meaning of the painting circles around one of the baroque era’s great tropes, to remember and search for Fides and not to let worldly riches forget her. This article also explores how a baroque Christian neostoic worldview might form part of the ideas and philosophy that underlie Du Jardin’s invention.
