Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca 1525-1569), The Triumph of Death (ca 1562), oil on wood, detail 4.

Museo del Prado, Madrid.

In the right corner, a dinner has abruptly been broken up. The nobles which had participated, brandish their swords by the menacing approach of skeletons, some of them dressed in winding-sheets. A jester takes refuge beneath the dinner table. Nearby, a masked and yellow-dressed death attendant empties two wine flasks which were intended for the dinner’s feast, a backgammon board and playing cards lying apart. In the extreme corner, a man is playing lute and a lady is singing, while behind her a skeleton echoes with false tunes on some stolen string instrument. Behind the almost empty dinner table, a lady is harassed by an attendant and a second one disguised in a hooded blue-grey robe, mockingly brings another dish, but only filled with a skull and human bones.