Jacques-Martin Hotteterre

[3] Hotteterre lived and studied in Rome early in his career, and his nickname le Romain (the Roman) came from this period.

[4] He spent two years (1698–1700) employed by Prince Francesco Ruspoli in Rome,[5] before adopting the nickname of "Le Romain" at some point between 1705 and 1707.

Hotteterre was Chamber Musician to the King of France, and was the first one to play a transverse flute in the orchestra of the Paris Grand Opera.

Specialists in woodwind history are generally aware of three "Hotteterre" flutes—in Berlin, St. Petersburg and Graz—all of which closely resemble the one in Picart's engraving.

However it has recently been shown that two of these are nineteenth-century replicas of a specimen now lost, and only the Graz example is in fact the work of Jacques Hotteterre or his father, Martin.