Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651 – 1717),
was a French painter often associated with Jean-Honoré Fragonard but notable in his own right. A pupil of Bon Boullogne, he began his painting career at a portraitist, with a notable work being a portrait of Marie Leszczyńska with the Maison de St Cyr in the background (now at the musée de Versailles). Although his religious paintings lacked inspiration, the Susanna contributed to Santerre's fifty-year reputation as a painter of the erotic nude, in which field he was the forerunner to François Boucher (1730–1770) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806).