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An hourglass carved on a monument, marking time running out.
Also known as: Sandglass, Hour glass on a grave
A two-bulbed glass with sand running through it. One of the oldest and least ambiguous mortality motifs: it appears in memento mori imagery long before it becomes a gravestone convention, and the reading is stated in contemporary sources rather than inferred by later writers.
Denotes the passage of time and its exhaustion, and appears throughout memento mori imagery in European art from the late medieval period onward.
Late medieval onward · Contexts: History
Unusually among gravestone motifs, this reading is supported by contemporary sources rather than being attributed retrospectively: hourglasses appear alongside explicit inscriptions about the brevity of life, and in emblem books that state the meaning outright.
Frequently carved with wings, in which case the motif is read as time flying — tempus fugit — rather than merely as time passing.
Also used outside funerary contexts as a general emblem of time and, in modern software, as the waiting cursor.
Contexts: Software
Two triangular glass bulbs joined point to point at a narrow waist, held in a frame, with sand shown in the upper or lower chamber.
Both belong to the vocabulary of mortality motifs used on monuments.
The winged form adds wings to the same glass and shifts the reading from time passing to time flying.