The painting is a representation of "divinized physical love" and the overpowering experience that consumes Semele as the god appears in his supreme beauty which has been called "quite simply the most sumptuous expression imaginable of an orgasm".

"[3] Moreau described his canvas thus: "In the midst of colossal aerial buildings, with neither foundations nor roof-tops, covered with teeming, quivering vegetation, this sacred flora standing out against the dark blues of the starry vaults and the deserts of the sky, the God so often invoked appears in his still veiled splendor.

"Moreau's work depicts an intricate, intense, and startling mystical world, haunting and heavily laden with symbolic imagery.

His throne and surrounding court, however, present an unorthodox and extravagant profusion of architectural and vegetal elements which — while depicted in fine, realistic, even jewel-like, detail — give the overall impression of a dream-like fantasy world.

[citation needed] The French writer and painter Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) called the central image of Jupiter and Semele "this birth-death in one".