A painter is working in front of a model posed like Marsyas. Behind him, a geographer examines a globe and, at the same table, two scholars bend over a book. In the foreground, set apart from this candle-lit scene, adopting a clear melancholic pose, is the saturnine figure of Minerva, patroness of the Arts and Sciences with her helmet and spear, resting a foot on a sphere, and accompanied by her attribute, the owl.