The decoration of the Chapel of the Trinity at the Château of Fontainebleau occupied the senior artists of the French court for many years. Following the deaths of Toussaint Dubreuil in 1602 and Étienne Dumonstier II in 1603, Henry IV summoned Fréminet back from Italy to take over the project. This recently discovered sheet was an early idea for the lunette depicting the Annunciation above the high altar.

Typical of Fréminet's Mannerist-revival style is the inverted composition, in which the central figures of the Virgin and the archangel Gabriel are calm and diminutive in the middle ground while the foreground corners of the lunette are densely packed with subsidiary figures in poses of elegant contortion. Fréminet's muscular, Michelangelesque style had a strong impact on the development of the second school of Fontainebleau.

A large presentation drawing by Fréminet for the high altar (Musée du Louvre, Paris) shows the lunette as it was actually painted, with some changes from the Metropolitan's study; most notably, Gabriel was given a standing pose. The altar was ultimately built to a different design, however, beginning fourteen years after Fréminet's death, and in the end it obscured a large portion of the Annunciation fresco.