The indeterminately mythological figures that populate this peaceful landscape are intended to evoke a poetic conception of the artistic past. The figures in the center personify the three plastic arts: architecture, painting, and sculpture. They are surrounded by the nine muses of Classical antiquity.

The scene’s subdued, chalky colors and overall flatness recall Roman wall paintings. Indeed, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was the leading muralist in France when he first displayed this painting at the 1884 Salon, a state-sponsored art exhibition; this canvas is itself a smaller version of a mural he made for the stairway of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France. That work was one of the inspirations for Georges Seurat’s mural-sized painting A Sunday on la Grande Jatte—1884.