Evert Collier, "Still Life with Books and Manuscripts and a Skull"
Most western paintings of books are vanitas subjects. Whatever you know (and whoever you know?), you'll be dead soon enough. The large book at left is of sermons; the manuscript at lower center is a calligraphic rendering of the 26th Psalm. The pious reader has marked his or her place with a skull and crossbones and left an emptied glass on top. It must have been quite a night. This 1663 painting is in the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.