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The picture shows the frescoes on the ceiling vault in the Sala delle Muse in the Museo Pio-Clementino in the Vatican. They represent Apollo scenes and ancient Greek poets, in the centre panel The Contest between Apollo and Marsyas.
In 1770, the museum for the Vatican's antiquities was founded under Pope Clement XIV. In it is the last great hall painted with an elaborate fresco program in Rome in the eighteenth century. The ceiling of the Sala delle Muse, painted by Tommaso Conca between 1782 and 1787, alludes to the statues installed in this space, among them, in addition to the Apollo with Muses discovered in Tivoli in 1774, sculptures of philosophers and poets.
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