Bounty of James I triumphing over Avarice

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.