Perrier left France in his twenties, arriving in Rome in 1624 (the same year as Poussin) and assisting Giovanni Lanfranco — a pupil of Annibale Carracci who brought the legacy of his native Parma to Rome — until 1628. The Eternal City was the focus of pan-European artistic interactions, and during the 1620s Perrier must have met Simon Vouet there. In the early 1630s in Paris he collaborated with Vouet and then returned to Rome for a longer stay between 1635 and 1645, during which it appears he painted our canvas. Perrier is well known to cultural historians for his series of etchings illustrating the great Classical statues of Rome, published in 1638 and 1645. He was among the first teachers of Charles Le Brun, and shortly before his death he became one of the founding members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.