It depicts a large forest scene wherein various nude women are associated with sundry figures from classical and medieval mythology—not only the titular chimeras, but also centaurs, winged creatures, fawns, minotaurs, etc.

A nude woman being courted by a centaur is the focal point, while other women and their respective chimères, here taken in the meaning of "fantasies" or "dreams,"[citation needed] not only literally, fill out the piece.

In the Middle Ages, however, the chimera took a new meaning, representing the perverse forces of the Devil as in Dante's Inferno and, later, hypocrisy and fraud, as in the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa.

[1] In France, une chimère had the additional idiomatic meaning of an illusion or delusion; all these various connotations no doubt influenced Moreau, who began no less than half a dozen paintings with variations on the theme.

In addition to these Renaissance influences, Moreau followed in the footsteps of Nicolas Poussin, another philosophically-disposed painter, and also partly the Neoclassicists, with whom he shared a love of proportion, accurate form, and harmony of composition.