Guercino, born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara, was by the age of seventeen associated with Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School.

He had moved by 1615 to Bologna, where his work had earned the praise of an elder Ludovico Carracci.

For Cardinal Serra, Papal Legate to Ferrara, he had painted two large canvases, Elijah Fed by Ravens and Samson Seized by Philistines, in what appears to be a stark naturalist Caravaggesque style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggios firsthand).

The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego) had been painted in 1618 contemporary with The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo in the Palazzo Pitti.

His first style, he will often claim, had been influenced by a canvas of Carracci in Cento.

Esteemed very highly in his lifetime, some of Guercino's later pieces approach more closely the manner of his great contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness.