Julian the Apostate

Antonio Verrio decorated the King's Staircase for William III as a grand entrance to his new royal apartments at Hampton Court. The room is a typically Baroque piece of trompe l'oeil art, with the staircase transformed into an open courtyard, surrounded by two ranks of columns and pillars, and open to the sky. Within this illusionistic stage, Verrio has interpreted The Caesars, a satirical story composed by the 4th century Roman emperor and author, Julian 'the Apostate'. This colourful tale pokes fun at the various flaws and failures of Roman emperors and introduces the heroic figure of Alexander the Great as a rival candidate to be considered for a place among the gods of Olympus.

On the south wall, Verrio painted Julian sitting at his writing desk, receiving literary inspiration from Hermes, messenger of the Gods. Julian, as emperor, had attempted to return Christian Rome to its pagan past. Perhaps surprisingly, by the 1690s, Julian was seen by Protestants as a wise reformer, speaking out against the intolerance and corruption of the Roman Church, just as William III's Protestant revolution had deposed the Catholic king, James II, from the thrones of England and Scotland.

In a separate scene, painted in muted grisaille, Verrio depicted Aeneas, the hero of Virgil's Aeneid, seeking the advice of the Cumaean Sibyl, before his journey to the Underworld where his father Anchises revealed his future as one of the founders of Rome. This is part of a wider iconographic programme across the whole of the King's Apartments which introduced William III as the true British heir of imperial Rome.