Born into a poor family, young Philippe de Champaigne refused to join Rubens's workshop in Antwerp. He was a pupil of Jacques Fouquières, a landscape painter in Brussels. He wanted to visit Rome but stopped in Paris in 1621, settling in the Latin Quarter at the Collège de Laon where he befriended Nicolas Poussin and worked for the Mannerists Georges Lallemand and Nicolas Duchesne, whose daughter he married in 1628. He left Lallemand's workshop around 1625 and began to work on his own. Having returned to Brussels, he was recalled a year later by Claude Maugis, superintendent of Marie de Médicis's buildings, to participate in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace, whose centerpieces were a series of large paintings recounting the life of the patron by Rubens. Champaigne painted several ceiling frescoes there.