After all the partying of the past weeks, it's time to ponder your sins.. to help you get into the right mood, I've added Old Father Time, painted in 1810 by the Utrecht artist P.C. Wonder, one of the great 19th-century pictures in the Rijksmuseum collection.
It's an unusual composition, without scythe or hourglass. Instead, the mirror refers to vanity, the scales to justice, and the withered cabbage reminds us of our mortality. The snake, biting its own tail, symbolizes eternity.
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