The scene is crowded and set symmetrically, with Joseph in the center, with the flowered mace, who is putting the ring on Mary, as they are being blessed by the priest behind them.

Abandoning the iconographic tradition, Joseph is represented as a handsome young man, rather than elderly and therefore incapable of affecting Mary's virginity.

Such a revolutionary choice has always interested scholars and the only possible explanation found so far is that it wants to symbolically represent the renovatio ecclesiae promoted by Leo X and carried forward by Clement VII.

The gazes and gestures of these figures direct them in depth towards the central scene, according to a scheme that goes beyond the traditional pyramidal shape, transforming it into something more complex, in spaces welded within two opposing semicircles.

New, for example compared with earlier works such as the Dei Altarpiece, is the consistency of the colour, which has become dazzling and rich in iridescent reflections, perhaps due to the influence of Perin del Vaga, who had just returned from Rome.