Flowers were used as metaphors richly resonant with meaning, and were symbolic of morality and mortality, appearing as allegories of vanity and the cycles of human life, birth, blossom, death and decay. Oosterwijk's Vanitas points to the ambivalence of the genre which ostensibly warns against preoccupations with earthly things while using the illusionism of oil paint to celebrate and reproduce material possessions. Each object is accurately and sensitively reproduced, as a reminder perhaps that the very strength of worldly pleasure, possessions and consumption depends upon its evanescence. Oosterwijk included an enormous range of examples from the three groups of objects commonly used to convey this moral. The professional life is represented by the pen and ink.
Worldly wealth is symbolized by the account book and coins.
Frivolous pastimes are present in the flute lying on the music and a glass of aquavita. Whilst only a very small proportion are artists of the highest or even high merit. Actually, more than 200 of these are of late eighteenth and nineteenth century and at least half of them are women. By the late eighteenth century flower painting had become a common genre for women artists. One can hardly imagine a serious art historian attempting to explain Michelangelo's David by equating its lithe, athletic vigour with the temperament and physique of the artist himself.