Jean Lemaire was a French painter who worked in Rome from an early age, where he became part of the circle of Nicolas Poussin. He sometimes collaborated with Poussin, providing the architectural perspective, especially when the two worked on the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in 1640. Theseus finding his father’s Sword, c. 1636 (Musée Condé, Chantilly) is believed to be a similar collaboration – the figures by Poussin and the architecture by Lemaire.

This painting was originally listed without attribution in the Royal Collection, until 1816 when it was given to Danckerts (the journeyman supplier of Classical landscapes to the English). The more recent attribution to Lemaire (with a date of the early 1630s) has been widely accepted. The painting has been extended; originally it was architecture only (the joins running across just above and down just to the right of the architecture are visible to the naked eye). The attribution to Lemaire belongs to the left hand side; the right hand trees were probably added around 1700 by a local artist when the painting was already in the Royal Collection, in order that it might fit an overdoor position. The original part of the composition exhibits a superb clarity of classical architecture, semi-ruined in order to show the structure of its walls and foundations, almost like a cut-away drawing. The figures have Poussin’s studious antique air - two are drawing and the third holds a porte folio under his arm. They are deliberately not presented to the viewer as in a play – one looks down, one turns away and the third is obscured by a column.