3-061-798 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A voluptuary surprised by death, 1600-1699. Death is showing the young man a letter written by the man to sell his life in exchange for riches. The point of the picture is not that he enjoys pleasure but that his pleasures (tennis, oysters, music) are those of wealth, gained by sacrificing his soul. Now Death has come to redeem the pledge. The curtained painting of the nude in the background is a Titian-type which also appears in Francken's paintings of picture-galleries