Getty Museum in the context of Ascoli Satriano

Domenico Fetti (also spelled Feti) (c. 1589 – 16 April 1623) was an Italian Baroque painter who was active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice.

The oldest traces of human occupation in Paris date from about 8000 BC, during the Mesolithic period. Between 250 and 225 BC, the Parisii settled on the banks of the Seine, built bridges and a fort, minted coins, and began to trade with other river settlements in Europe. In 52 BC, a Roman army led by Titus Labienus defeated the Parisii and established a Gallo-Roman garrison town called Lutetia. The town was Christianised in the 3rd century AD, and after the collapse of the Roman Empire, it was occupied by Clovis I, the King of the Franks, who made it his capital in 508.

During the Middle Ages, Paris was the largest city in Europe, an important religious and commercial centre, and the birthplace of the Gothic style of architecture. The University of Paris on the Left Bank, organised in the mid-13th century, was one of the first in Europe. It suffered from the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century and the Hundred Years' War in the 15th century, with recurrence of the plague. Between 1418 and 1436, the city was occupied by the Burgundians and English. In the 16th century, Paris became the book-publishing capital of Europe, though it was shaken by the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. In the 18th century, Paris was the centre of the intellectual ferment known as the Enlightenment, and the main stage of the French Revolution from 1789. In the 19th century, Napoleon embellished the city with monuments to military glory. It became the European capital of fashion and the scene of two more revolutions (in 1830 and 1848). The centre of Paris was rebuilt between 1852 and 1870 with wide new avenues, squares and new parks, and the city was expanded to its present limits in 1860. In the latter part of the century, millions of tourists came to see the Paris International Expositions and the new Eiffel Tower.

The Laundress (French: La Blanchisseuse) is a 1761 genre painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), existing in two versions. The subject of laundresses, also known as washerwomen, was a popular one in art, especially in France.

The prime version of The Laundress was one of fourteen works exhibited by Greuze at the Salon of 1761 and was part of the collection of Greuze's patron, Ange Laurent Lalive de Jully. The painting was mostly unknown for more than two centuries as it was purchased in 1770 by Gustaf Adolf Sparre and privately held in that Swedish art collection and rarely seen until it was acquired by the Getty Museum in 1983.