Born in Venice into a family of Bolognese merchants, Carlo Saraceni moved to Rome in around 1598, specialising in the early part of his career in small format pictures. He and Adam Elsheimer, who arrived in Venice in 1598 and went to Rome two years later, exerted a mutual influence on each other; in particular, both created innovative nocturnal scenes that marked them out as pioneers in this genre. The nocturnes of Titian and the Bassano family clearly influenced both Elsheimer and Saraceni; in Rome, the tenebrism of Caravaggio had created a taste for candlelit compositions.
