It is a depiction of a woman with glowing eyes playing a flute in the moonlight by the edge of a dark jungle with a snake extending toward her from a nearby tree.

[4][5] The painting has an asymmetric vertical composition with a detailed depiction of the jungle on the right and a woman playing the flute on the left, back-lit by moonlight from a full moon.

The Musée d'Orsay described the painting as "a black Eve in a disquieting Garden of Eden".

[4] Sylvia Plath's 1957 poem "Snakecharmer" and Willard Elliot's 1975 composition The Snake Charmer for Alto Flute and Orchestra were inspired by Rousseau's painting.

[6][7][8] The painting was used as cover art for the 2000 novel Merrick by Ann Rice, Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett, Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald, and Gaia by James E. Lovelock.