Simon Vouet in the context of Premier peintre du Roi

Guido Reni (Italian pronunciation: [ˌɡwiːdo ˈrɛːni]; 4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian Baroque painter, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci.

Grand Siècle (French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃ sjɛkl]) or Great Century refers to the period of French history during the 17th century, under the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.

The period was notable for its development of art, music and literature, along with the construction of the Palace of Versailles, the effects of the French Wars of Religion, and the impacts of the Thirty Years' War, which made France the dominant power in Europe instead of Spain. Significant figures during this period include gardener André Le Nôtre, architects François Mansart, Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart, painters Nicolas Poussin, Simon Vouet, Claude Lorrain, Georges de La Tour, Philippe de Champaigne, Charles Le Brun, sculptors Pierre Puget, François Girardon and Antoine Coysevox, playwrights Pierre Corneille, Molière and Jean Racine, the poets François de Malherbe, Jean de La Fontaine and Nicolas Boileau, writers Madame de La Fayette, Charles Perrault, composers Henri Dumont, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, André Campra, Henri Desmarest, Marin Marais and François Couperin, philosophers René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Antoine Arnauld, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Gassendi, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, and Pierre Bayle.

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Church of the East Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith (Hebrew: יְהוּדִית, Modern: Yəhūdīt, Tiberian: Yŭhūḏīṯ), meaning "praised" or "Jewess", is the feminine form of Judah.

The extant translated manuscripts from antiquity appear to contain several historical anachronisms, which is why the majority of modern scholars consider the book ahistorical. Instead, the book has been re-classified as a parable, theological novel, or even the first historical novel. Although the majority of Catholic scholars and clergy now view the book as fictional, the Roman Catholic Church had traditionally maintained the book's historicity, assigning its events to the reign of King Manasseh of Judah and that the names were changed in later centuries for an unknown reason. The Jewish Encyclopedia identifies Shechem (modern day Nablus) as "Bethulia", and argues that the name was changed because of the feud between the Jews and Samaritans. If this is the case, it would explain why other names seem anachronistic as well.