Schnetz, a pupil of David, is best known as an important church artist and as director of the École des beaux-arts in Paris and then the Académie de France in Rome.  He specialised in popular Italian scenes which were very successful at that time in Europe.  The themes of murder and robbery in the Roman countryside were commonly used.  The painter explains nothing of the circumstances of the crime and focuses the dramatisation on the child, the son of the dead woman, running away.