Young Man and Skull (Jeune homme à la tête de mort)

Young Man and Skull (1896) at the Barnes Foundation is one of Cézanne's most explicitly symbolic subjects—a memento mori pairing of a contemplative young man with a skull on the table before him. This vanitas tradition subject, linking Cézanne to Dutch seventeenth-century painting, was treated with his characteristic structural rigor: the skull becomes an object as worthy of geometric analysis as any apple or pot, while the young man's pensive pose creates a figure-object dialogue unusual in his late work. The Barnes Foundation's holding of this canvas gives it unusual prominence in the Cézanne literature.

The skull's spherical form is described through Cézanne's warm-cool color modulation system, identical to his treatment of apples or other rounded objects. The young man's head and hands are given equivalent structural treatment. The dark, enclosed space around the figure and skull creates a focused, concentrated atmosphere reinforcing the meditation on mortality.