The Duchess (Dance of Death)

The image features a woman wearing an elaborate headdress and ruffed collar, reclining against pillows in a canopied bed with carved wooden posts. To her left, a skeleton stands at the bedside, playing a small fiddle, while a second, smaller skeleton leans over the foot of the bed, reaching toward the woman's feet. A small dog sits on the floor in the foreground, facing away from the viewer. The room is rendered in high-contrast black-and-white lines, showing the texture of the drapery, the wood grain of the bedframe, and the patterned wall behind the woman.

This print is part of Hans Holbein the Younger's 'Les Simulacres et historiées faces de la mort', a seminal series of the Northern Renaissance that popularized the 'Danse Macabre' motif, emphasizing the universality of death across all social classes.