A trompe l'oeil of a portrait of a man and an engraving of a portrait of Giovanni Battista Marino, above a shelf with an assortment of musical instruments on a musical score, attached to a wooden partition

The artist of the present work has yet to be identified but probably worked in the Veneto, where other painters are known to have been producing similar trompe l'oeil still lifes. These include Andrea Remps, Carlo Sferini and Benedetto Sartori (the first two active in the second half of the seventeenth century, the last in the first half of the following century). The musical score in the present still life would suggest a dating in the eighteenth century.

The engraving of Giovanni Battista Marino was executed by Johann Friedrich Greuter after an original painting by Simon Vouet of circa 1615-1620 (now lost). In the present work, however, in place of Greuter's name, that of Joannes do Salvet can be read. Salvet may possibly have been a later engraver - three eighteenth-century German engravers with the name Johann Salver are recorded.