Standing behind a table, his head turned in profile to the left, the philosopher transcribes from a book propped on a shelf or stand on the left, onto a folded sheet of paper with a quill. Other papers lie scrolled on the table top. The subject was at one time thought to be Duns Scotus (c 1266-1308), the famous Scottish Franciscan exponent of Scholasticism, but this has been rejected.

The painting is one of a number of pictures that have been grouped under the name of the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, after a painting in the City Art Gallery, Birmingham. No documents relate to this artist; active in Naples in the first half of the seventeenth century, he was conceivably of Spanish origin. His work can be likened to that of Ribera, who popularised the pictorial theme of philosophers in Naples. Sometimes the depictions are of famous Greek figures but quite often they are less specific, including a category of poor or beggar philosophers; the figure here is probably of this kind. A version of this painting is recorded in the Warschaw collection, Los Angeles, and numerous copies exist.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated Royal Residences of 1819, hanging in the King's Drawing Room at Windsor Castle (RCIN 922107).