In this print, Israhel van Meckenem employed the Renaissance device of emphasizing by understatement. He put the horrific image of John the Baptist's beheading in the background, as a courtly ball occurs nonchalantly in the foreground. Scenes of the saint's decapitation and Salome presenting his head to Herod and Herodias play out in the upper corners of the print, contrasting the saintly ideal of self-denial with a life of indulgence and selfish pleasure.