Images of bubbles were largely used in vanitas, a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with 17th-century Dutch still life painting and also common in other places and periods. Vanitas is loosely translated from Latin as the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. In the 17th century Dutch artists painted children blowing bubbles to convey the brevity of human life, the transience of beauty and the inevitability of death.

In the sixteenth century, the Dutch philosopher Erasmus reintroduced the Latin expression “Homo bulla” (”man is a bubble”) in his “Adagia”, a collection of sayings published in 1572.
The symbolism of homo bulla was proverbial in the 1st century BC.
(http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2009/01/homo-bulla-vanitas.html
http://oldprints.wordpress.com/2006/09/18/as-time-goes-by)
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