Jean Baptiste Massé started his artistic career under the tutelage of Jean Baptiste Jouvenet and Louis de Châtillon. It was in this studio that he specialized in printmaking, portrait drawings and portrait miniatures.

Born into a Protestant family of jewelers and goldsmiths, Massé was initially prevented from entering the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture due to his religion, but eventually, after appealing to the Regent Duc d'Orléans, he was accepted into the academy in 1717, and was appointed Conseiller in 1740.

Massé is best known for the vast series of engravings that he executed after his own drawings of the ceiling paintings by Charles Le Brun in the Galerie des Glaces, the Salon de la Guerre ...