Fries met de bestraffing van Niobe (plaat 7)

This engraving features a crowded, frieze-like composition of muscular figures in states of distress and activity. Some figures carry sacrificial animals and large vessels, while the Latin inscription below details the deaths of Niobe's sons, Ismenos and Sipylus, at the walls of Thebes. The dense, interlocking forms are characteristic of the late 16th-century Haarlem Mannerist style.

The myth of Niobe serves as a potent allegory for 'hubris' and the inevitable divine retribution that follows mortal pride. In the Neoplatonic and humanist circles of the Renaissance, such myths were studied as moral lessons on the fragility of earthly success and the necessary submission of the human ego to cosmic and divine order.