The Salon d'Hercule is the antechamber between the Royal Chapel and the first of the King's state rooms, and it contains one of the finest ceilings in the palace. The enormous painting — François Lemoyne's Apotheosis of Hercules, completed in 1736 — covers 150 square metres of ceiling and contains more than 140 figures. It took Lemoyne three years to paint and was his masterpiece; the effort of it is said to have contributed to his mental breakdown and suicide the year after it was unveiled.
The room also contains two enormous paintings by Veronese — Eliezer and Rebecca and Meal in the House of Simon — which Louis XIV purchased as part of the Venetian collection assembled by Louis XIII. They hang here in ornate gilded frames that were designed around them: the room, in some sense, was built to show off the pictures.
The salon was the last room completed in Louis XIV's palace (in 1710) and the first you enter from the chapel. The transition from the chapel's pale stone and light-filled vault to this room's dense gold and rich colour is one of the more striking contrasts in the palace sequence.