Desprez won the Grand Prix in 1776. He left for Rome the following year staying at the Académie until 1782. Through Francesco Piranesi, the artist met the young King Gustav III of Sweden who convinced him to settle in Stockholm. After two years of uncertainty, Desprez signed a contract with the Court in 1786, his principle duty being to provide the royal theaters with stage designs.
On 2 June 1787 the new Royal Swedish Dramatic Theater was opened in the former Jeu de Paume of the Royal Palace, converted by order of the King into a theater entirely dedicated to Swedish plays . Desprez designed the stage curtain for which the present sheet is a modello. Two copies of the present drawing by Desprez's pupil, Per Erstenberg, are known; one at the Drottningholm Theatre Museum and the other formerly in the F. Estenberg Blyberg.
As Peter Fuhring remarked, the compositon was inspired by Sébastien Leclerc's print of Love and Psyche celebrated on Mount Olympus. Medallions of the King are held aloft while angels blowing trumpets support the arms of Sweden. Wollin notes how Desprez followed the decorative details of the work of Louis Masreliez who the previous year, in 1786, painted a monumental canvas of the Death of Alceste