Having gained fame both in Vienna and Dresden as a painter of miniatures, in 1776 Heinrich Friedrich Füger arrived in Rome where he began to try his hand at historic painting. Taken under the wing of Queen Maria Carolina, he also spent some time in Naples at the Bourbon court, which entrusted him with the decoration of the final room of the Palatine Library of Caserta. Having returned to the imperial court, in 1783 he was nominated Director of the Academy of Vienna and in 1806 Director of the Imperial Gallery of Drawing. His intellectual style, influenced by David and by the French neo-classicists, was strongly criticised by the young German Romantic painters.