Charles André van Loo (1705-1765), known as Carle van Loo (or Vanloo), was an important French painter and the most famous of his family of artists. His grandfather, Jacob van Loo, was a Dutch painter who came to France. His father, Louis-Abraham van Loo, specialized in religious and mythological paintings. Carle van Loo studied with his brother, Jean-Baptiste van Loo, in Turin and Rome before joining the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, where he won the Prix de Rome in 1724. Carle van Loo had a brilliant career, being professor at the Académie Royale, where the famous Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was one of his pupils, and being, from 1762 until his death, the painter to the French king Louis XV. In typical neo-classical taste, this counterproof shows an antique scene with a male figure kneeling before a group of figures (soldiers?). In the background, Carle van Loo delicately and discreetly sketches the first features of the architecture in which the scene takes place.