Charles Mellin (1598–1649ca) from Lorena was already active in Rome in the second decade of the sixteenth century, and was without doubt the luckiest and most capable among Simon Vouet’s (1590–1649) many students and collaborators in the papal capital. His first documented works, executed between 1627 and 1635 in the academy of the Muti Papazzurri palace in Piazza Santi Apostoli, show evidence of an already mature and independent painter who had tempered the lessons of his first French master and absorbed the varied influences of other painters such as Giovanni Lanfranco, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni and Nicolas Poussin. Thanks to the identification of new works and with the help of previously unavailable documents, the author traces the character of Mellin’s paintings during his initial years in Rome. From 1623 to 1627, the artist was Vouet’s first assistant in the busy atelier located in via Frattina, a formidable creative centre where Virginia da Vezzi, Claude Mellan, Jacques de Létin and other young painters popularised and spread the style Vouet introduced — characterised by Caravaggio–like influences filtered and mitigated by the artist’s unmistakable decorative and theatrical elegance. Vouet introduced Mellin to his circle of friends as well as his influential patrons who belonged to the Francophile Barberini court, including Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654) and the noble and erudite art lover Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657), who was the recipient in 1638/1639 of a detailed study of Trajan’s arch in Benevento.