This is one painting in a set of 12. There was a family of artists called Gautier D’Agoty, of which Jacques-Fabien was the first. He became well known for his part in the development of colour printing: in association with anatomists such as Pierre Tarin and Joseh-Guichard Duverney, he published some of the first colour prints of anatomical and natural historical subjects. He also painted two sets of 12 anatomical figures in 1765 as models for his life-size colour prints. One set of the paintings was produced for the Académie de Dijon and the other he took to Paris to serve as models in making the prints. The latter set is presumed to be the set of 12 now in the Wellcome Library: they were bought in Paris by Henry S. Wellcome in 1914.