Francesco Vanni lived from around 1563 to 1610. Vanni, one of the most important masters of the Sienese school of late Mannerism. Vanni was a prolific painter and a devout Catholic belonging to the Congregation of the Sacred Nails, brotherhood that had a great importance in the spread of the dictates of the Council of Trent in Siena in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The artist trained first in his Siena his teacher's stepfather Arcangelo Salimbeni who had married his mother and brother as Ventura Salimbeni; after the rudiments moved to Bologna to broaden the cultural horizons and study on the works of the Carracci. Back in the nineties of the sixteenth century in Siena, he realized sacred art paintings, imbued with new stylistic canons of the Counter-Reformation, like the altarpiece for the altar of Sant'Ansano in the Siena Cathedral and the main altar in the church of St. Nicholas Sasso. In Rome between 1600 and 1604, Vanni worked for the Basilica of St. Peter's following the example of Roman Mannerism and coming soon in contact with the lecture by Federico Barocci.