RUBENS, Peter Paul
(b. 1577, Siegen, d. 1640, Antwerpen)

Allegory on the Blessings of Peace

1629-30
Oil on canvas, 203,5 x 298 cm
National Gallery, London

At the demand of Charles I of England, who knighted him, he painted the Banqueting House ceiling with a sequence of compositions to the glory of James I. He also painted an Allegory of Peace for Charles. It was the pictorial equivalent of the letter he had sent to Peiresc: "I hope that his Holiness and the King of England, but above all the Good Lord Himself will intervene to smother the flames, which currently threaten to spread across and devastate the whole of Europe."