A young woman is shown at half-length, pouring water from one jug into another. She wears a blue dress over a white chemise with gold braid which reveals her breasts. There are pearls in her hair, and a pendant hangs by her ear with a small gilt figure of a man. Behind her, in shadow to the right, a man is watching her. He has a dark beard and moustache and is wearing a dark-red pleated velvet coat and a plumed hat.

The girl's action, pouring water from one jug into another, is the normal one for personifications of Temperance. The man may merely express mortification, but their relationship seems to indicate an amorous rather than moral difference. It may be that the ostensible subject is chiefly a pretext for a titillating, erotic image.

While parts of the painting - specifically the sitter's heads - can be compared with Romanino's work, John Shearman suggests that the painting is more likely to be an early seventeenth-century Venetian pastiche or copy of his work, rather than by his hand.