Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (c. 1886), painted by Vincent van Gogh, captures a skeleton with a burning cigarette in its mouth—an image that is as darkly humorous as it is profound. The painting was created during van Gogh’s time at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, a period marked by both academic study and emotional turmoil. The artist’s engagement with this piece possibly had multiple layers of meaning, ranging from a study of anatomy to an unconventional commentary on death, making it a memento mori painting, a popular genre from the 1600s.
