Dozens of light-skinned men and women gather around clusters of columns and sandstone-colored buildings that line a crimson-red river to our right in this horizontal painting. The center of the painting is dominated by a structure made up of three rows of three columns each, which hold up a flat-topped roof. A similar structure angles into the distance along the left edge of the painting. The columns of these two structures are carved with bands showing people separated by rings of vertical lines. The capitals are carved with stylized leaves. Just beyond the columns to our left, a blocky, rose-pink structure is carved with more people, seated or standing singly or in pairs. More rectangular, parchment-brown buildings extend into the distance along the water’s edge. The people gathered along the riverbank wear robes and tunics in deep blue or black, bright white, or saturated tones of cobalt blue, ruby red, or shell pink. Standing within the columns of the central structure, a crowned, bearded man wearing an emerald-green robe under a scarlet-red cloak gestures to our right, toward the red river. A woman nearby, wearing lapis blue and also crowned, watches with hands flung up as a person pours red liquid from a bucket. Most of the other people look or gesture toward the river, which winds in deep S-curves from the horizon line, which comes about two-thirds of the way up the composition, through sage-green fields, to the town. A single, white lightning bolt zigzags down from a white cloud in an otherwise navy-blue sky above.
