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This expansive painting does not tell a coherent story. Rather it consists of many different scenes and exempla in which the contrast between the enjoyment of life and death, between embracing reality and fleeing from it, is shown very suggestively, without requiring that the pictures be read in a certain sequence.
At the top left part of the painting, stone steps ascend to a hermitage where the contemplative, spiritual life is shown as a monastic idyll whose peace and tranquillity seem to affect even the animal world.
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