Minerva surrounded by the Arts and Sciences

Antonio Verrio decorated the Painted Room in the Little Banqueting House at Hampton Court Palace for William III to provide a grand but intimate setting for the King to entertain his guests. The room appears to be a richly carved interior with framed pictures, but the whole effect is achieved by the illusionistic devices typical of baroque mural painting, with extensive gilding work by Peter Cousen.

The ceiling painting pretends to be open to the sky, a popular illusionistic trick of baroque painters. It shows the goddess Minerva sitting in majesty over various allegorical figures including: Painting (with easel and brushes); Music (with trumpet); Song (with open mouth and lute); Sculpture (with a carved bust, possibly a portrait of William III); Astronomy (crowned by a circle of stars), and Architecture (holding a scroll with an architectural plan). The identification of the remaining figures is uncertain. At the edges of the oval fly figures representing the Four Winds, attended by representations of the Four Seasons and the signs of the zodiac with which they were most associated: Spring, the West Wind and Aries; Summer, the East Wind and Leo; Autumn, the rainy South Wind and Libra, and Winter, the ice-breathed North Wind and Capricorn.

As with Verrio's other work for his royal patrons at Hampton Court Palace (he painted the King's Staircase, Great and Little Bedchambers for William III, and the Queen's Drawing Room for Queen Anne) his designs are both typically exuberant and playful, whilst also being carefully pitched pieces of royal propaganda. Here we are invited to consider that it is William III's enlightened patronage that has brought all this artistic splendour and noble learning to Hampton Court!