Antoine Pesne

Antoine Pesne (1683-1757) began his career as a student at the Académie Royale in Paris. When furthering his studies in Rome and Venice, he came to the attention of King Frederick of Prussia, who invited him to Berlin and made him First Painter to the Court in 1711. Pesne spent much of the 1720s in Paris, where he became a member of the Académie Royale and a leading painter of portraits, but beginning in 1832 he received a series of commissions from the  Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (who became King Frederick II in 1740), for whom he decorated a series of palaces and residences (including the Schloss Charlottenburg and Sanssouci) in the French Royal style. When Pesne painted G. F. Schmidt & his Frau in 1748, one of his most recent commissions had been Frederick II Bringing Peace and Happiness to the Universe at the Stadtschloss in Potsdam (Marande 541-42).