Charles de La Fosse (1636–1716) was the student and then protégé of Charles Le Brun, Premier Peintre du Roi, prominent member of the Académie Royale de Peinture and a main contributor to the building projects at Versailles until the death of Colbert. La Fosse pursued his training in Italy, where he studied masters such as Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. The influence of Italian painting, along with his admiration for the work of Rubens, brought a new manner to the French classical style inherited from Le Brun, one that could be described as suppler and more elegant, with the use of bright colours. La Fosse returned from London, where he had been decorating a palace for the Duke of Montagu (1700–1701), when Jules Hardouin-Mansart assigned him the paintings of the Dôme des Invalides. Between 1702 and 1706, he painted the decor of the dome and the pendentives portraying Saint Louis presenting his arms to Christ and the four Evangelists.The drawing at MuMa is a study for the figure of Saint John the Evangelist who appears in one of the dome