This ceiling painting is only one of three by Verrio at Windsor to survive. Most of the artist's twenty decorative schemes were destroyed during George IV's reconstruction of the Castle in the early nineteenth century. The ceiling depicts a banquet of the gods, and a series of still lifes of fruit, fish and fowl decorate the coving. 

Verrio relied on a decorative formula which opens up the room by including mythological or allegorical figures in a sky rising from a painted ledge or balcony, often decorated with putti, swags of fruits or flowers, or brightly coloured birds. Much of his inspiration derived from decorative schemes created by Le Brun for Louis XIV at Versailles.

The artist was continually employed by Charles II from 1678 until 1688 and received about £5,500 for work undertaken at Windsor Castle. His principal task was to decorate the new State Rooms, which were then being rebuilt by the architect Hugh May. The diarist John Evelyn, who saw work being done on 23 July 1679, reported of 'that excellent painter, Verrio, whose works in fresco at the King's Palace at Windsor will celebrate his name as long as those walls last'. In 1684 he was appointed Principal Painter to the King, following the death of Peter Lely.