Vanitas with books and an owl

This painting is the work of the Bolognese artist Giuseppe Maria Crespi: the attribution is due to the quality of the pictorial matter, which shapes the objects in thick brushstrokes, and to the color tones fading from ocher to brown with the touch of green typical of Crespi’s palette.
The subject is a typical “memento mori”(it reminds of life’s limits): a skull and an owl lay on the squared book; the laurel wreath framing the skull, however, refers to the eternity of fame as well as the a bird with spread wings, sacred to Minerva, seems to claim the immortality of wisdom.