The following descriptions of the painting are provided by Mazzoleni, Donatella (2004). Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House . Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 0892367660 , with essays and texts on the sites by Umberto Pappalardo and photographs by Luciano Romano. Mazzoleni (2004: p. 388) writes the following about the painting's location in the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus and its various characteristics:

The passageway from the peristyle to an interior room, possibly intended for cult use and summarily decorated in a Second Style schema, has a lunette decorated with a medallion. In this medallion, a divinity graces a tympanum delineated by two garlands hung against the red ground. At the center the goddess Aphrodite is painted wearing a sumptuous embroidered tunic that is fashioned at the shoulders with brooches. She is adorned with three pearl necklaces, and earrings of twin pearls of a type frequently seen at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Her hair is elaborately dressed in ringlets, and she wears a golden diadem on her head; two pairs of veils hang down her back from the nape of her neck. The goddess holds a scepter decorated with a bird in her right hand. The rest of the painting is very simple—a red socle with horizontal lines, and a black middle register with squared panels edged with carpet borders and decorated with vignettes representing swans.

Mazzoleni (2004: p. 390) continues this description with an image caption:

Painted decoration in the room between the peristyle and an interior space. There is a medallion with an image of Aphrodite at the center of the lunette and within a tympanum formed of garlands.

Finally, Mazzoleni (2004: p. 392) provides another image caption for a closer view of the painting:

Page 400: The House of Marcus Fabius Rufus. Medallion with an image of Venus. The richly dressed and bejeweled goddess holds a scepter.