The work had been variously assigned, to Leonardo da Vinci, one of the Ghirlandaio family, or an unknown 15th century painter.

It features a man, whose legs are tied by a serpent, who closes to an aged one, dressing in red and sitting near a tree.

An inscription gets out from his mouth, saying NULLA DETERIOR PESTIS QUAM FAMILIARIS INIMICUS ("Nothing is more dangerous than a family's enemy") and going towards the old man.

The subject has been variously interpreted: as the story of Laocoön, an allegory of two enemy brothers, or, more likely, of the civil wars that followed the fall of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence.

The last version is supported by the fact that, in Renaissance art, the presence of a well defined city (Florence in this case) had always a meaning.