When the architect Felix Duban was commissioned in 1848 to restore and finish the Louvre’s Gallery of Apollo, he called on the greatest painters of his time to complete the paintings. The large central ceiling compartment, 8 metres square, was still empty. In 1850, Eugene Delacroix began and finalised the iconographic programme left by Charles Le Brun two centuries earlier. He chose to show Apollo in the ultimate battle of Good and Evil, symbolised by the serpent Python. Despite his hard work, his painting was not completed for the gallery inauguration in June 1851 .