painting

Minerva Overcoming Ignorance

Peter Paul Rubens

About this work

Object details

TitleMinerva Overcoming Ignorance
Date1632-1633?
Mediumoil on canvas
Measurements62,4 × 48,4 cm
Inventory number802

More about this work

In a letter of 13 September 1621 to Charles I’s agent Rubens confirmed that he was prepared to paint canvases for a royal reception room. More specifically, the works were intended for the Banqueting House designed by the architect Inigo Jones in the Palace of Whitehall in London. That building was completed in 1622 and was the first in Great Britain to be designed according to Palladian principles. The interior had the volume of a double cube (34 x 17 x 17 m metres), and was used for festivities, spectacles and the performance of masques, as well as for ceremonies connected with the Order of the Garter and for audiences with ambassadors. The building and its interior can still be visited today. Rubens and his assistants painted nine illusionistic ceiling paintings covering around 255 square metres. The content, division and style echo Veronese’s ceiling paintings in the Church of St Sebastian in Venice. The canvases are an allegorical glorification of the rule of Charles’s father, James I. They were completed in 1634 but remained rolled up for a year due to protracted arguments over payment, after which Rubens and his assistants had to repair the damage. They were only installed in their sculpted gilt frames in 1635. Duing the installation it was discovered that their dimensions were wrong, and extra boards had to be added to the ceiling. It turned out that Rubens had been calculating in Antwerp feet, and not the larger English foot that Inigo Jones had used! A mass of design drawings for the project have been preserved, including a design in oils for a grisaille of the entire ceiling (London, Tate Britain, inv. no. T12919). The sketch in the KMSKA is a model for one of the four oval compositions in the corners of the ceiling. Each of them shows a virtue defeating a vice: Abundance triumphant over Avarice (south-west corner), Temperance triumphant over Intemperance (south-east corner), and Hercules triumphant over Envy (north-west corner). The Antwerp model is the design for the composition in the north-east corner, with Minerva, the helmeted goddess in her fluttering robes. Wih her lance she is impaling Ignorance, the monstrous, writhing figure under her feet. In the past this figure was wrongly identified as Defiance, Rebellion, Lasciviousness, Envy or Discord. The oil sketch is in a rather poor state of preservation. In the past it was transferred from panel to canvas, and that canvas was then pasted onto wood. Drastic overcleaning seriously damaged the background.