Antoine Pesne was born in Paris on 29 May 1683. His initial teachers were his father and his uncle Charles de la Fosse. Later the artist attended the Académie Royale. A scholarship gave him the opportunity to study in Italy from 1705 - 1710. A portrait by Pesne of the Prussian envoy in Venice sparked the interest of Frederick I who, in 1710, asked Antoine Pesne to come to Berlin. One year later Frederick I. appointed him court painter. In 1720 the artist became a member of the academy in Paris. Pesne gained a high reputation because of his portraits of the royal family. The artist became the head of the Berliner Kunstakademie in 1722. It was during this time when Pesne also painted his portraits of Frederick II. and Julie von Voß. In the following years Frederick the Great also assigned him to create allegoric as well as mythologic murals and ceiling paintings in the castles Rheinsberg, Charlottenburg, Sanssouci and the Potsdamer Stadtschloss and to paint genre scenes. Antoine Pesne died in Berlin on 5 July 1757.