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The picture shows part of the fresco decoration on the east wall in the Room of Giovanni da San Giovanni. It represents Fame Showing the Wandering Philosophers to Tuscany and Munificence.
The arrivals of poets and philosophers in Tuscany after their "expulsion" from Mount Parnassus is an allusion to the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks in 1453, after which Lorenzo the Magnificent offered refuge in Florence to Greek scholars who fled the Eastern capital. Recognizable are the figures of the seated Empedocles, wailing over the loss of books, as well Aristotle and Plato. The seminude allegory of Tuscany standing behind Munificence receives the wanderers who are being recommended to her by winged Fame.
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