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During his fifty-year reign (1680-1730) Vittorio Amadeo II transformed Turin, the second royal residence on Italian soil after Naples, into one of the most splendid Baroque cities in Europe. In 1584 he started the enlargement of the palace known as the Palazzo Reale. The additions to the palace were patterned after the models of French court architecture, but for the wall decorations he looked for Italian painters. The decoration continued under the reign of Carlo Emanuele III (1730-1773). In addition to painters from Rome and Venice, Neapolitan painters also made a significant contribution to the decoration.
Francesco de Mura within a period of roughly eighteen months (1741-43) painted five ceilings in the king's summer apartment, part of which occupied the north wing. His subjects were taken from Greek mythology, and four of these ceilings have survived in what was subsequently turned into an archive. One of these ceilings depicts the Disciplines of the Olympic Games in Antiquity.
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