Allegory of Faith

This painting was sold at auction at Christie's, New York, on January 27, 2010 (Lot 23, Sale 2282). In the opulent domestic interior of Jacob Duck's Allegory of Faith, a beautifully attired woman sits amid an array of delicately and precisely rendered objects which fill the composition. An hourglass, a skull and crossed bones on a table and a flickering candle evoke the brevity of life and certainty of death. Worldly knowledge - represented by a great pile of books, and worldly treasure - displayed in the form of jewels and fine silks, tell of the inexorable end that awaits each of us.