The Countess, from The Dance of Death

In an interior, a fashionably dressed countess stands before a table, startled as a skeletal figure of Death leans over her shoulder to drape a necklace of human vertebrae around her neck. The countess wears a patterned gown and an elaborate headdress, while a maidservant stands to the right, holding a piece of cloth and gesturing with an expression of shock. On the table sits an hourglass, a symbol of fleeting time, and the background features a wood-paneled wall and a window looking out onto a landscape.

This work is a quintessential example of the 'Danse Macabre' (Dance of Death) tradition, a late medieval and Renaissance motif illustrating the universality of death and the vanity of worldly status. It reflects the widespread preoccupation with mortality in 16th-century Europe, often associated with the 'ars moriendi' (art of dying) literature.