Lund came to Rome in 1802 after first training in the academies in Copenhagen and Dresden and finally under David at Paris. In Rome, he joined the prolific group of artists around Thorvaldsen and the poet Friederike Brun. He knew Friederike Brun from Denmark, where he had given her children instruction in drawing. During the final months of her visit to Rome in 1810, Friederike Brun had the recently arrived Nazarenes – Overbeck (whose parents she knew from Lübeck), Pforr, Vogel and Hottinger – living at her home, and there Lund met them before moving back north with Mrs Brun.
Lund hoped to become a professor in the Academy at Copenhagen. However, he was not at first successful in this, and in 1816 he returned to Rome. During the years that had now elapsed, the Nazarenes had established themselves. Their art had found its characteristic expression, and despite his neo-classical background, Lund was very open to the new trends. The painting of St Ann and the little Mary – Nazarene by virtue of its tender feeling and its early Renaissance style – is thought to have been painted in 1818 on the basis of a sketch of Friederike Brun and her foster daughter Emilia Maria Zoëga.
1818 was also the year in which Lund and Eckersberg were appointed professors in Copenhagen. Eckersberg was of great art-historical importance as the teacher of the most important of the artists who came to characterise the Golden Age. But by virtue of his international outlook and good contacts to the Nazarenes, Lund also played a part.
