The Fifth Day (Dies V), from the series The Creation of the World

A muscular male personification sits in the foreground, his back to the viewer as he overlooks a sea teeming with whales, sea monsters, and crustaceans. In the sky above, birds including an eagle, a swan, and a peacock take flight from rugged cliffs. The circular composition emphasizes the abundance and diversity of new life filling the elements of water and air.

This work reflects the late Renaissance interest in the divine order of the 'Great Chain of Being' and the categorization of the natural world. It illustrates the Neoplatonic concept of the material world as a complex, vitalistic unfolding of divine intellect, common in the natural philosophy of the 16th century.