In pictures: Early reminders of death in Malta

A Vanitas still life attributed to the Maltese painter Francesco Noletti. Courtesy Heritage Malta

The irreversible transience of life has held centre stage in most civilisations, as a spiritual warning firstly but also as a self-contained genre in creativity.The concept of Vanitas – the futility of all human exertions when our ultimate destination is annihilation, permeates Western thought – as a prop to belief in an afterlife, or as...