The central figure in this picture is Love, who is holding the moon. In the original drawing for this picture, the moon was a sundial with the date 1290, the year of Beatrice's death. Love stands against a decorative background divided along a diagonal running from upper right to lower left. A field of rays emanate from the head of Christ, the sun, while He gazes longingly at Beatrice, whose face is inscribed in a crescent moon against a background of stars. The inscription qui est per omnia saecula benedictus are the last lines of his autobiographical novel, Vita Nuova. In the finished design for this piece, Beatrice's head was inscribed with the final words of the Divine Comedy: Love that moves the sun and stars. The panel as painted varies in many respects.