The French artist François Perrier first travelled to Rome in the 1620s, during which period he made numerous drawings after ancient sculpture. He published these in 1638 under the title Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum. One of the fundamental compendia of ancient sculptures for artists and connoisseurs across Europe, this volume facilitated the translation of various classical models into seventeenth-century subjects. Perrier himself drew upon the Apollo Belvedere (120–140 CE) as the idealized example for his representation of the angel Tobit.