A group of scholars discuss various questions in a room. Some are sitting around tables while others contemplate some of the many paintings and art objects scattered around the room. Depictions of dilettantes or aficionados in collectors´ galleries or rooms ornamented with art objects constituted a customary genre among seventeenth-century Flemish painters, glorifying the practice of collecting as a cultured and sophisticated activity. While the artist´s esthetic is in keeping with the straightforward representations of the Francken family, Stalbent displays more intellectual ambition by offering a message with political content, here. The two central figures contemplate a painting recalling the destruction of artworks by Protestants in the late sixteenth century. A Painting on the wall in the background shows Minerva and Fame saving Painting from the attack of another figure who represents Ignorance. These are allusions to how Science and the Arts were protected in the Catholic Low Countries but not in the Protestant North.