Revellers enjoying life before they die of plague. Colour lithograph after F. Jenewein, 1900.

Subject described by Karel B. Mádl as follows: "Madness increases. If [i]t is impossible to stop or to overcome the tyranical invasion of plage [sic], it is better to enjoy, what life can still offer, and to plunge into intoxicating pleasure, as the last remedy against the plague. "By day and by night", says Bocaccio [sic], people flocked into taverns, drinking and revelling, visiting also houses of the worst repute. They made merry, and laughed and jested." That, which Bocaccio [sic] describes with his clever pen Jenewein represents still more powerfully in his picture, the madness and intoxication of bacchantic voluptuousness. The lowest filth came uppermost and spread like a new contagion. There is no shame, no moral feeling; everything is drowned in drunkenness, fornication and blasphemy. How the drummer beats the drum, and the mob of half naked men and women, intoxicated with passion reel and stagger!"