With the Gallery of Apollo, Louis XIV began the first major project in the Louvre. Charles Le Brun, the king’s First Painter, was commissioned to rebuild and decorate the ‘Galerie des Rois’ of Henri IV, destroyed by fire in 1661. Le Brun was very influenced by the Baroque aesthetic that he had experienced in Italy. He was particularly inspired by the gallery of the Farnese Palace in Rome, painted by the Carracci brothers between 1597 and 1608. Le Brun required the painters and sculptors of the Royal Academy to reproduce his plans to the nearest millimetre. The general theme of the gallery was the Sun, the star that the young King Louis XIV had chosen as the symbol of his reign.