Young Man Holding a Skull (Vanitas) by Frans Hals was often thought to be a painting of that scene in Shakespeare’s play "Hamlet" when Hamlet is holding the skull of Yorick, the court jester, but that is super incorrect.

If you see a young man holding a skull and paid attention in high school English class, more often than not, your first thought is going to be “To be, or not to be. That is the question.” (Or, to be more accurate, it might be "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio," because that's the monologue Hamlet actually launches into when he's holding the skull.) At any rate, you’ll automatically be transported back in time to when you had braces and crippling self doubt, when prom was the highlight of the social season, and when your reading list was made up of Shakespeare, Shakespeare, and more Shakespeare. If this sounds like hell, then the good news is that this painting is not actually about Hamlet’s decision whether or not to commit suicide. The bad news is that this piece is about the certainty of your own death. Don’t believe me? Then why is the young boy holding a skull and pointing at you?

This kind of painting was super popular in the Netherlands in the 17th century. It was so popular in fact that pieces like this one can actually be traced back to the early 16th century, long before Hamlet ever paced the floorboards with a moody tread. It’s called a "vanitas," and it’s here to remind us that we are tiny specks of dust on a slightly larger speck of dust hurtling through space and nothing we do or say will keep us from dissolving in the ground one day. You might think that this kid is wearing awfully pompous clothing for this kind of a message. It seems like a giant pink feather attached to red beret would make anything that comes out of your mouth sound like a joke, but this was all the rage back then. This was the clothing used for allegorical and genre paintings by the Dutch followers of the legendary Caravaggio, one of the early leaders of the Baroque period. It may be silly, but who are we to question the fashion choices of Caravaggio?