On the obverse, the medal depicts the painter Filippo Lauri (1623-1694) in profile to the right, with long hair and voluminous draped robes. The son of the painter Balthasar Lawers (Lauri in the Italianised form), Filippo had his first artistic training within the family contest, under the supervision of his brother Francesco, a pupil of the painter Andrea Sacchi. After his brother's death, Filippo then passed into the workshop of Angelo Caroselli until 1652, the date of the latter's death. Lauri was involved as a fresco painter in some of the major decorative campaigns in Rome in the second half of the 17th century, serving very prestigious patrons. However, he was also prolific as a painter of easel works, particularly of small dimensions, to which he devoted almost all his production in the last years of his career.

The reverse of the medal shows the painter busy reproducing on canvas a model placed on the left behind the easel. This is a herm of Diana Ephesia, symbolising Nature and thus, in connection with the sphere of art, the process of imitating nature itself that guides the artist's creative process. In this case, however, the motto 'Aemulat et superat' that accompanies the figuration suggests the idea of a painter who not only imitates nature by selecting its most beautiful parts, but even manages to perfect it with his art. The concept alluded to by the reverse appears perfectly in line with the artistic orientations promoted at that time by Giovan Pietro Bellori within the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (Simonato 2020, p. 228).

Without any date or signature inscribed, neither the author nor the commissioning context of the medal is known with certainty. Formerly attributed to Giovacchino Francesco Travani (active 1647), it has recently been tentatively assigned to Charles-Jean-François Chéron (Simonato 2020; Montanari 2014, p. 420; Pollard 2007). The depiction of the painter on the obverse shows similarities in the modelling with the style of the French medallist, while the reverse still raises some questions (Simonato 2020, p. 226).

Chéron, a pupil of the famous medallist and sculptor Jean Warin, arrived in Rome around December 1667, after a brief stay in Florence (Montanari 2014). In contact with the Roman Baroque ferments and with the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, he devoted himself mainly to the production of cast medals. His favourite subjects of depiction were his peers. He portrayed in medals the leaders of the Roman artistic scene such as the sculptor Bernini and the painters Pietro da Cortona and Carlo Maratti (see Museum nos. A.2-1966, A.2-1975 and A.20-1973). Among the artists he perhaps also portrayed Filippo Lauri, whose works were very successful in Rome at the time. The possibility that Chéron executed the medal is suggested by the fact that the commission for the medal may have come from the French Academy in Rome, at least according to the information given by Francesco Saverio Baldinucci in the biography of the painter (ed. Anna Matteoli 1975, p. 174; cf. Simonato 2020).