, oil paint, the foreground is filled with light, mainly falling on a group of girls in fine dresses, and also, although less harshly, on a man on the left side of the picture, who appears to be a painter. elements further back in the image, including two additional figures, are in shadow, except for a distant doorway with the silhouette of a man, and an illuminated image of a man and a woman inside a frame on the back wall. there are eleven people depicted here : eight inside the room, the man in the doorway, and the two figures inside the frame. there is a dog lying down at the front right, at the feet of one of the girls, who is a dwarf. it is likely that the man has been depicted as if he were studying the subject of his painting. if this were a photograph, we might say that he was looking into the camera. on the back wall of the picture there are four framed images, placed close together in two rows up to ceiling height, almost obscuring the wall. the upper two pictures and the bottom left one are in darkness and their subject matter cannot be identified. the brighter image has refracted light at its edges suggesting that this may not be a picture at all, but a mirror reflecting a situation that cannot otherwise be seen. the position of the mirror and that of the painter suggests that the two people in the mirror are the painter ’ s models.