Since the mid-seventeenth century this area was known as the Hall of Viceroys, where the portraits of all the viceroys of Naples were displayed. Used for official ceremonies under the Bourbon kings, the room was renamed during Joachim Murat’s reign (1808-1815), when a plaster copy of the famous Farnese Hercules (now at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples) was displayed. The copy was later moved to one of the niches of the portico on the ground floor of the palace, where it can still be seen today.
The tapestries were manufactured in Naples by the Royal Manufactory; the larger ones, representing Stories of Cupid and Psyche, were woven by tapestry weaver Pietro Duranti after cartoons by Fedele Fischetti and destined to the Royal Palace of Caserta (1783-1786).
The gilded bronze clock on the table is the oldest in the palace’s clock collection. Made in Paris at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Jacques-Augustin Thuret, clockmaker to king Louis XIV, it portrays the Titan Atlas, who according to Greek mythology was condemned by Zeus to bear the weight of the sky on his shoulders.
