Antonio Verrio was born at Lecce, in the Kingdom of Naples in 1639. His initial training for his profession is unknown, but his first patrons were the Jesuits, for whom he worked in both Lecce and Naples. He then spent some years travelling through Italy and France. He settled in Toulouse, where he painted an altarpiece for the Carmelites, which is described in Du Puy’s Traité sur la Peinture. By the year 1671, Verrio was in Paris, where he met the English ambassador Ralph Montagu, (later 1st Duke of Montagu), who, wishing to revive the famous tapestry works at Mortlake, ruined by the English Civil War, invited him to England. Verrio first worked for Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, but was soon in the employ of King Charles II, for whom he painted Charles II’s Sea Triumph (c. 1673-5; in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court). The portrait was probably worked up from a miniature executed by Samuel Cooper. It is possible that it was painted as a trial piece, executed before Verrio had seen his new patron, to give the king some idea of his abilities. In Verrio’s portrayal, the King, wearing classical armour, is driven through water by Neptune in a high, shell-backed chariot. Apart from numerous other figures, the monarch is accompanied by three female figures carrying crowns, symbolising his three kingdoms. Verrio then commenced introducing the decorative Baroque style of historical and mythological painting to England.  In the period 1673-84 the architect Hugh May supervised the reconstruction of the Upper Ward and State Apartments at Windsor. He chose to employ a full-blooded Baroque style of décor and the ceilings were painted by Verrio. The walls were wainscoted in oak and heavily ornamented with carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Henry Phillips. St George’s Hall and the King’s Chapel were enhanced by murals depicting historical scenes by Verrio. The paintings in St George’s Hall consisted of a main oval ceiling of King Charles II in Garter robes enthroned and attended by various allegorical figures, with the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury among the forces of Evil dispersing Libels. The subsidiary octagons depicted the Star of the Garter surrounded by the Muses, and the Collar of the Garter, bordered by other allegorical figures. In the cove, putti supported Garter mantles. The north wall depicted the Black Prince being received in triumph by King Edward III; the west wall feigned tapestry with St George and the dragon; and on the east wall, were depicted two statues in niches. The Windsor scheme was the greatest undertaking of Verrio’s artistic career, occupying him and a team of assistants, including Nicolas de Largillière, for a total of nine years. He left behind the inscription: ‘Antonius Verrio, Neapolitanus, Non ignobili stirpe natus, Molem hanc Felicissima Manu decoravit’. (Antionio Verrio, a Neapolitan, born of a not ignoble race, adorned this building with a most happy hand). The rich irony of King Louis XIV of France, depicted on bended knee before Charles II, on the ceiling of the King’s Great Bedchamber cannot not have escaped that monarch, dependent as he was on Louis’s secret subsidy. George Vertue recorded that the work at Windsor was ‘perform’d to the great satisfaction (King Charles 2d paid him Nobly for his workes here but being very lavish of his good Fortune the King also gave him a Gold Chain & Medal of great Value’. Verrio’s painted ceilings were of two basic types, some imitating plasterwork, set with pictures and some painted to look as if open to the sky, beyond a feigned parapet. Although most of the painted decoration at Windsor was believed to have been  destroyed in about 1824, during the remodelling of the castle for King George IV by the architect Sir Jeffrey Wyattville, a number of fragments from other rooms were dismantled and preserved. Only three ceilings now survive: the King’s Dining Room, the Queen’s Presence Chamber and the Queen’s Audience Chamber. He received nearly seven thousand pounds for his work at Windsor. A surviving sketch for a ceiling design may be seen above. In 1684, Verrio’s reward was appointment as Principal Painter to the King. He was close to Charles, who esteemed him greatly and they understood something of each other. That King’s threadbare purse was ever open to him and Verrio thought nothing of entreating him for money before his nobles. He kept open table, lived in some style and was possessed of a mischievous sense of humour. Verrio immortalised the house-keeper Mrs Marriot, with whom he had a disagreement, by using her ugly face for one of the furies on the ceiling at Windsor. He also depicted himself, Godfrey Kneller and ‘Baptist’ May in long periwigs, as spectators in the presence of Christ, healing the sick. On one occasion, when instructed to insert the figure of the pope into a procession he adjudged dishonourable to the Catholic faith, he substituted a portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Verrio later carried out work for King James II at the Palace of Whitehall. He was appointed ‘Principal Gardiner and Surveyor to the King’ in 1684. After King James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Verrio initially refused to serve the Dutch Protestant King William III.  He was then employed by Lord Exeter at Burleigh in Lincolnshire. There, he executed the ‘Heaven Room’ and the ‘Hell Staircase’. In the first, he depicted ‘Gods and Goddesses disporting themselves as Gods and Goddesses are wont to do’ The room was described in one 19th century guide book: ‘As you look around this extraordinary room you feel it transports you into another world. Although a painting the flat surfaces of the walls are transformed into three dimensions, filled with the illusion of movement. Verrio’s work defies description; it is “other worldly” - his characters overflow with colour and seem so life-like you feel as if you could reach out and touch them. In Verrio’s Hell Staircase, the mouth of Hell is depicted as an enormous gaping mouth of a cat with souls of torment writhing within. Death the Grim Reaper, plies his sickle amongst the unfortunates. After the glorious light and joy of the Heaven Room, by contrast, the viewer is exposed to disquieting darkness and despair.’ Afterwards, Verrio executed many considerable works at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, amongst which, he painted the altar-piece in the chapel, representing the Incredulity of St Thomas. Through the intercession of Lord Exeter, Verrio assented to carry out works at Hampton Court and decorated five rooms in that palace; the King’s Staircase, the Kings Great Bedchamber, the Banqueting House, the King’s Little Bedchamber and the Queen’s Drawing Room. The King’s Staircase is probably the most elaborate example of Verrio’s work. In the scheme for the staircase, Verrio depicted King  William III in triumph, dominating a group of Roman emperors who represented that King’s enemies, of which he was not short, as well as a banquet of the Gods denoting the peace and plenty William had supposedly delivered. In later years, some of the scenes Verrio painted inside Hampton Court’s Banqueting House were regarded as indecent and requests were made to have them  painted over. However, such requests were addressed by the judicious reorganisation of the household furniture. Verrio carried out his last commission for Queen Anne in 1705. She granted him a pension of £200 a year and he spent his twilight years at Hampton Court. He had faithfully served England’s monarchs for a total of 30 years and expired on 15 June 1707. Verrio was in the following centuries viewed as an aberrancy in the artistic culture of England and his art would be described pusilanimously by Horace Walpole: ‘ an excellent painter for the sort of subjects on which he was employed ; that is, without much invention, and with less taste, his exuberant pencil was ready at pouring out gods, goddesses, kings, emperors and triumphs, over those public surfaces on which the eye never rests long enough to criticise, and where one should be sorry to place the works of a better master: I mean ceilings and staircases.’ Verrio’s self-portrait may be found in the Primary Collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London and his equestrian Portrait of King Charles II may be found in the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.