The Waggoner (Danse Macabre)

This woodcut shows an chaotic scene of a carriage accident in a rural setting. A skeleton, representing Death, kneels on top of a barrel loaded onto a wooden cart that has overturned, its wheel spinning in the air. To the left, a man wearing a tunic and cap throws his hands up in alarm, his face contorted in distress. In the foreground, the legs and torso of a horse are pinned under the cart, suggesting it has been killed or severely injured in the crash.

This work is part of Hans Holbein the Younger's 'Les Simulachres et historiees faces de la mort', a seminal series in the memento mori tradition illustrating the universality of death across all social strata. The series draws upon the late medieval 'Danse Macabre' motif, framing death as an inevitable and often sudden end to earthly labors.