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In the middle of the richly dressed courtiers stands a peacock with a skull.
Peacocks are an obvious metaphor for vain splendor, and Caspar Scheydt wrote a small poem for Birckmann's Holbein-copies, comparing the pomp of mortal humans with the feathers of a peacock: »Gleich wie der Pfaw«. Incidentally, the same poem was included in Merian's books from 1649 and onwards and in Eberhard Kieser's Holbein-copies.
In the case of this particular "rara avis", however, we don't have to look far, since Todten-Capelle also has such a skull-peacock and with the same text as in the painting:
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Der Mensch ist in den Tod verführt |
Man is seduced into death |
Dances of death
Danish dances of death
National museum
Peacock