[1][2] To the left, under a clear blue sky, is a barrack, and in front of it a minotaur is strapped to a stake prepared with firewood.

In the middle of the picture, a woman lies on her back with a ball in her hand, while a creature with a long red beak touches her breast with a rod.

Reviewing the Para exhibition for The New York Times, Roberta Smith wrote that "only two paintings have color that really sings and draws you toward them", of which one was Waiting for the Barbarians and the other was The Next Move.

Largely unimpressed by the exhibition as a whole, Smith wrote that "the painting that makes the most sense is Waiting for the Barbarians, in which a Minotaur, or a man dressed as one, is taken to a small stage, like Christ before the people, while another burns at the stake."

[3] Mario Naves of the New York Observer compared Waiting for the Barbarians to Balthus' 1936 painting The Mountain, and wrote: The canvases bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, but Mr. Rauch’s enigmatic panorama is too unsettled and stern to succumb to the French master’s brittle nostalgia.