Peter Paul Rubens
1632–33
Oil paint on wood
60.6 cm x 45.2 cm
Peter Paul Rubens received commissions from rulers all over Europe. This sketch relates to one from King Charles I for the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace, London. The final nine ceiling canvasses are still in place today. Here, a woman holds a horn of plenty filled with fruit and coins, celebrating the generosity of Charles’s father, James I, and the prosperity of the Stuart dynasty.