The Physician

A skeleton enters a physician’s study, holding up a flask filled with liquid for inspection. The physician, seated at a desk and wearing a fur-lined robe and a soft cap, looks toward the skeleton with his hand outstretched, while an elderly patient waits behind the skeleton near a doorway. A dog lies curled on the tiled floor in the foreground, and shelves holding books and medical glass vessels line the wall in the background.

This print is part of Hans Holbein the Younger’s 'Dance of Death' series, a definitive example of the memento mori tradition that emphasizes the inevitability of death regardless of one's social status or profession.