The canvas Archimedes was created in the second half of the 17th century by a painter from Naples known as the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds. This nickname is associated with the title of the composition The Annunciation to the Shepherds from Birmingham City Gallery created by Spanish painter Juan Do. The researchers studying the oeuvre of Neapolitan school artists are still trying to find the answer to the question of why the painter chose not to disclose his real name.

The Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds worked at the same time as Jusepe de Ribera, a popular Spanish artist of the time. It is with his famous works from Philosophers and Apostles cycles that painting Archimedes is compared to. Images of ancient philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Democritus and others appear throughout Jusepe de Ribera’s creative work. Ribera’s models were peasants and fishermen, beggars and tramps. They posed for him with paraphernalia typical of thinkers, such as scrolls, compasses, books, and other science-related items.

Archimedes created by the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds is also a portrait of one of the anonymous artist’s contemporaries. He depicted a tramp of the mid- 17th century endowing him with the features of an ancient thinker. The artists managed to create a psychological portrait of his character, who abstracted himself from everything external and sank into his thoughts and the world of learning. This image was further developed by artists of the Seicento period that preceded the Baroque era.

In the 19th century, the painting Archimedes adorned Count Pavel Stroganov’s library in his mansion in St. Petersburg. At the time the work was called 53 Old Man. Ribera School. When the painting came to Tambov Museum of Local History, it was identified as the painting entitled Mathematician by a 17th century Italian artist Agostino Scilla. In 1974, Sergei Androsov, head of the Western European Fine Art Department of the State Hermitage, suggested that it was created by Italian painter Luca Giordano, who copied Jusepe de Ribera’s works. It was not until ten years later that Victoria Markova, Italian painting specialist at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, managed to establish that it was a work by the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds.