A young man crowned with laurel and ringed by a halo of light stands at the left in an orange cloak, one finger raised, speaking to the blacksmiths in a dim forge. The workmen have stopped, hammers and tongs in hand, and the older smith nearest him, in a white headband, stares back. Armor, an anvil and tools lie scattered across the floor. The scene comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Apollo, the sun god, tells Vulcan, the smith of the gods, that his wife Venus is deceiving him with Mars.

Velázquez painted it in 1630, probably in Rome during his first Italian trip, as the biographer Palomino wrote in 1724. The Prado compares it with Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob, another scene of a group hearing shocking news. The first known reference to the painting dates from 1634, when it was sold to King Philip IV for the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid. The Prado catalogs it as Vulcan's Forge.

It is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.