I’m currently obsessed with bubbles in art. This is a side effect of having taken a Theory & Criticism course on the olfactory in art. Bubbles are kind of a fascinating art icon. They’re endlessly poetic, as they have the qualities of being ephemeral, floating, and reflective. They allow us to see the invisible life force all around us: air.

I spent some time trying to find the very first recorded use of bubbles in art, and the best I could find was an illustrated manuscript from Flanders in the late 15th century, in which little mischievous monkeys decorate the page borders while playing music, hunting, spinning wool and in one instance, blowing bubbles. A few years later, an artist nearby in northern France would include bubble blowing in a couple of religious paintings.

But before there were bubbles there were orbs. Orbs were showing up in art around the same time as the earliest bubbles, but the orbs were much more common. The most expensive painting ever sold (as of the time of this blog post) is tentatively attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, and in it Jesus holds a glass orb. Dürer included an orb in his famous print Melencolia I. But aaaaanyway…

Artists use bubbles as metaphors for anything we sense but cannot see, like air. So if you start with the bubbles in Greek literature, and follow the trail through monkeys and orbs, you will eventually find yourself at vanitas paintings, hot air balloons, thought bubbles in comics, music notes, and lots of modern, conceptual art. If you’re at all interested, I have a 17 page research paper on the subject to share!