François Brunery was christened Francesco Brunnery in the northern Italian city of Turin, at the heart of a region that is today part of both Italy and France. Although cultural and familial ties with France ran deep in the region, Turin was also the centre of the Italian unification movement. It, in fact, served briefly as the capital of the new Italian nation from 1861 to 1865. Within this cultural context, it is not unusual to find families whose lineage contained both French and Italian branches, with surnames shifting depending on the locale. Thus, François Brunery signed his paintings with the French and Italian versions of his last name.
 
Brunery seems to have left Turin in the 1860s for Paris, where he studied with two of the most prestigious academic painters of the day, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) and Léon Bonnat (1833-1922). The older of these two mentors, Gérôme, had established his reputation in the 1850s as a painter of classical themes, expanding his repertoire to include Orientalist subjects. In addition, his interest in anecdotal history painting, in which famous historical figures are shown going about ordinary everyday activities, would serve as an example to Brunery in later years.
 
Likewise, Bonnat, one of Gérôme’s friends, was a well-established academic artist in 1860s Paris. Together, the two men left Paris in 1868 on an extended painting trip to the Middle East. After returning from Jerusalem and Egypt, Bonnat began experimenting with anecdotal genre paintings. Although his interest in this particular approach lasted only through the 1870s, it was prevalent during the years that the young Brunery was studying art in Paris.