After spending some time working on Merveilleux's "Flora", he was able to obtain an appointment as court painter to King John V in 1727. His first assignment was to decorate the ceilings in Queen Maria Anna's apartments. As it turned out, those paintings had a short life, being destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Together with several other French and Flemish artists, he was commissioned to illustrate publications issued by the "Academia Portuguesa de História", which had been founded in 1721.