Death and the Musician

Music is traditionally counted among the pleasures of life, yet it also belongs to the temporal aspects of our existence. The tension between these two poles is cleverly depicted here. An athletically built young man sits among musical instruments, including a drum, a harp, and various early wind instruments such as a recorder, a cornetto and a shawm. Death, a half-decomposed corpse with an hourglass, a symbol of impermanence, has come to take him away.