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This interior depicts an elderly man at a desk surrounded by insignia of humanistic scholarship and applied science, including a globe, folios, an alembic, and a shawn. The scholar has paused in his writing to reflect and seems not to be aware that there are others in the room: next to him is a young boy with a wreath of ivy in his hair, holding out an hourglass with the sand run through, a symbol of transience. Behind the boy is a man in a coat and soft cap, who points toward the scene at the desk with his left hand. Death in the form of a skeleton appears in the doorway in the background on the right, accompanied by a weeping little boy carrying a urine specimen in a small basket. This is an allusion of urine as a diagnosis method, suggesting that the scholar is about to hold a medical consultation.
This subject is unusually serious for Jan Steen. The painter drew inspiration from several sources, among the Hans Holbein the Younger' Dance of Death woodcut series, and Johannes Vermeer's Astronomer.
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