The gruesome figures resemble those seen in alchemical illustrations and on tarot cards. Leonardo may have been influenced by Socrates' remarks in Phaedo that pleasure and pain "are like two bodies attached to the same head."
   Youthful Pleasure and elderly Pain are shown back to back.
Pleasure holds a reed in his right hand and lets gold coins fall from his left.  Pain drops caltrops (a device of iron spikes used to impede the progress of troops and horses) from his left hand and holds a branch with rose thorns in his right.
   The drawing is accompanied by a moralizing inscription:
   "If you choose pleasure, know that he has one behind him who will deal you tribulation and repentance."
   "This is pleasure together with pain and they are represented as twins because one is never apart from the other.  They are made with their backs turned to each other because they are contrary to one another; they exist in one and the same foundation, for the origin of pleasure is labour without pain, and the origins of pain are vain and wanton pleasures.  And therefore it is represented here with a reed in his right hand, which is useless and without strength, and the wounds made with it are poisoned."
   "In Tuscany reeds are placed to support beds, to signify that here vain dreams come and here a great part of life is consumed, here much useful time is wasted, namely that of the morning, when the mind is composed and rested and the body is therefore fitted to resume new labours."
   "Here also many vain pleasures are taken, both with the mind imagining impossible things, and with the body taking those pleasures which are often the cause of the failing of life."

   Drawn on the other side of Pleasure and Pain, Virtue and Envy shows joined male and female figures facing each other.  The female Envy has a scorpion's tail and for a tongue she has a snake with the head of a dragon.  She seems to be trying to steal Virtue's arrows and to set light to his crown and hair.  Virtue is gouging Envy's eye.

   The inscription says: "A body may sooner be without it's shadow than virtue without envy."

   For more intertwined figures see the Speculation section.

   This strange and dramatic drawing seems to have been created for the wedding festivities of Giulian de'Medici and Philiberte de Savoie.

   Some of Leonardo's allegories allude to specific political personages and events and this seems to have been the case here.

   "When Fortune comes, seize her in front with a sure hand, because behind she is bald."  Perhaps a better translation might be "because behind she is smooth" which conveys the idea that once the opportunity is past it cannot be brought back.

Leonardo on the fear of poverty: "A malignant and terrifying thing will spread so much fear among men that in thier panic and desire to flee from it they will hasten to increase it's boundless powers."