Nicolas Robert Orléans or Langres 1614 - 1685 Paris

Nicolas Robert was the greatest Natural History artist of 17th Century France.  He is particularly famous for his watercolors of flowers, plants and birds, executed on fine vellum; some of these vélins, loose and in albums, survive in collections outside his native France (for example in the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the Hofbibliothek, Vienna), but the vast majority are preserved in the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.  There they form the nucleus of a collection known as the Vélins du Muséum (formerly Vélins du Roi) of more than six thousand watercolours.

The collection was started by Gaston d'Orléans, brother of Louis XIII; Gaston was a passionate botanist, who employed several artists to make watercolors of the rare plants that he had assembled in his garden at Blois.  Robert's superior talent in this field was quickly recognized, and he was eventually responsible for much of the contents of the five large folio albums of vélins left by Gaston at the time of his death in 1660.  Subsequently, the king's minister Colbert ensured the continued expansion of the collection and had Robert appointed Peintre ordinaire du Roi pour la miniature in 1666, with a contract stipulating that the artist was required to paint a minimum of 54 vélins every year. 

Although a large number of vélins by Robert depicting birds and plants have survived, far fewer representations of animals are known.  The animal depicted here is native to Central America, and must have been known to the artist from a specimen in the extensive French Royal collection of exotic fauna and flora.