Krafft left for Paris in 1796, where he was the only Swede to study under Jacques-Louis David. Thanks to Marmontel’s novel, Bélisaire, from 1767, the Byzantine general Belisarius, who defeated the Ostrogoths in Italy in the 6th century AD, was a popular subject in the latter half of the 18th century. As punishment for the claim that he conspired against Justinian the Great, he was blinded and forced to beg at the gates of Constantinople.