A nude woman with a small crown kneels at the center, kissing a naked winged boy as she lifts an arrow in one hand and holds a golden apple in the other. A laughing child at the right is about to throw rose petals, and behind them an old man with a long beard reaches across to pull a blue curtain. Masks lie at her feet, and a howling figure clutches its head at the left. The National Gallery says Bronzino painted the allegory around 1545, probably as a gift from Cosimo I de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, to King Francis I of France, although there is no record of it in the French royal collection.

It reads the figures as Pleasure, Fraud, Jealousy and Father Time, and says the meaning is not entirely certain. The museum thinks it is the picture Giorgio Vasari described in 1568 as being of singular beauty and sent to King Francis. The howling figure has been read as Suffering, Jealousy or Syphilis, but the museum notes that so overt a reference would have been inappropriate in a picture for the French king. It was bought with the Beaucousin collection in Paris in 1860.

It is in the National Gallery in London.