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The twenty-five-year old Ottaviano de' Medici, on behalf of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X, commissioned Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio and Pontormo for decorations celebrating the pope's father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and other family members inside the family's villa at Poggio a Caiano. The iconographical programme, designed by the historian Paolo Giovio, aimed to evoke the celebrations of the Medici house through a series of episodes drawn from Roman history.
Work in the Salone was halted with the death of Leo X in December 1521. Pontormo was the only one to have finished his lunette fresco, frescoes by Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto on the long walls were partially incomplete. The decoration was completed by Alessandro Allori in 1578-82, a commission of Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici.
Allori first completed the existing parts of the frescoes by Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto together with those he planned, then he painted two large scenes, The Banquet of Syphax on the long wall containing Franciabigio's The Return of Cicero to Rome, and Titus Quinctius Flamininus's Speech before the Achaeans on the long wall containing Andrea del Sarto's Triumph of Caesar. In both scenes Allori placed the events in a large columned hall that opens up onto a landscape.
Finally, he painted the lunette on the wall opposite to Pontormo's lunette. It is a formal pendant to Pontormo's work, he took over the horizontal articulation, the number of figures, even the colours of their garments. The theme of the lunette is Hercules and Fortuna beneath the Tree of the Hesperides.
The picture shows the long wall with Allori's The Banquet of Syphax and Franciabigio's The Return of Cicero to Rome, as well as the wall with Pontormo's lunette.
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