Schuler worked on its completion until 1851, during which time he became witness to the counter-revolutionary backlash, which confirmed the pessimism and the anguish of his vision of the 1848 upheavals and turmoil.

As with older depictions, Schuler's painting shows people from all ages and walks of life: a pope, a king, a young mother (modelled on the artist's sister), a fool, a poet, a sick man, a lawyer, a murderer, a Native American, an Arab, a young Napoleon... being taken away by death.

[3][5][6] Schuler depicts different personifications of Death: one is the angel of death in the centre of the painting, a young and beautiful but cold-faced woman with black hair and black wings, who drives the chariot while looking straight at the viewer; the other is a skeleton in a shroud, in the lower right corner of the painting, which is shown grabbing an executioner with its right hand, while dramatically driving the Wandering Jew (a common trope of anti-Judaism) away with its left hand.

[1][6] On the opposite side of the diagonal starting bottom right with the Wandering Jew is a wayside cross, which the chariot is only driving by.

Schuler thus raises the question of the meaning of death and alludes to the inability of religion to provide an answer.