Entrusted with the decoration of the Louvre’s Gallery of Apollo, the painter Charles Le Brun turned to sculptors specialising in stucco to adorn the frieze bordering the vault. François Girardon on the south-west side, Thomas Regnaudin on the south-east side and the Marsy brothers on the two remaining sides quickly set to work. Le Brun provided them with his sketches for the seasons, inspired by the nine muses of Greek mythology. In front of this painting by Antoine-François Callet – “Spring, or Zephira and Flora crowning Cybele with flowers” – Terpsichore, the muse of dance, plays the lyre, and Polymnia, the muse of lyric poetry, declaims verses.