The painter represents the garden scene from Goethe’s Faust I in grisaille, that is in finely and artfully nuanced shades of grey. In intimate proximity, their heads close together, Faust and Gretchen question the flower oracle, while Mephisto and Marthe stroll in the background. With the walled garden, the pointed gables, the half-timbre houses, and the richly decorated clothing Pixis creates a dense, medieval-seeming space that functions almost like the stage of a theatre.