The painting depicts the Virgilian episode of the last book of the Aeneid (XII, lines 398 ff. and 411 ff.). Aeneas, armed and with young Ascanius in tears at his side, is operated on by Iapyx, who is kneeling in front of him, and who with forceps attempts to extract the point of an arrow embedded in his thigh. His mother, Aphrodite, arrives in flight bringing in her left hand a vial of herbal medicine prepared from plants gathered on Crete, on the slopes of Mount Ida.