The work is to be ascribed to the hand of Mariano Rossi, a painter trained in Palermo with Filippo Randazzo. In 1744 we know it in Naples in the workshop of Francesco Solimena. In 1750 the painter moved to Rome where he collaborated with Marco Benefial and, in 1766 he was welcomed to the Accademia di San Luca. His art expresses an excellent synthesis of the best Neapolitan craftsmen, demonstrating a careful study of the examples of Solimena, Luca Giordano and Corrado Giaquinto, but renewed by Roman classicism with results of the highest quality. Rossi's fame is mainly due to the fresco created for the vault of the entrance hall of Villa Borghese in Rome, depicting the Apotheosis of Romulus welcomed by Jupiter in Olympus (1774) and for having painted The Dream of Pope Innocent III in the church of Santa Maria all'Ara Coeli.