This is the central ceiling panel painted by Orazio Gentileschi, for Queen Henrietta Maria, for the ceiling of the Great Hall at the Queen's House Greenwich, c. 1636-8. The subject is an allegory of Peace reigning over the Arts. The entire ceiling was removed to Marlborough House, London (now the Commonwealth Secretariat) in the early eighteenth century.

In 1629 Henrietta Maria was granted Greenwich Park and Palace and the following year started completing the Palladian villa that Inigo Jones had begun in the 1610s for Anne of Denmark. By 1635 the building was complete and the decoration of the interior could begin. Henrietta Maria chose Orazio Gentileschi for this task and as early as 1633-4 building accounts show that four painting were given new frames presumably in preparation for hanging in the Queen's House. Two of them can be identified as by Orazio: Joseph and Potiphar's wife (RCIN 405477) and the Finding of Moses (Private Collection).

It appears that during the 1630s Queen Henrietta Maria was making a concerted attempt to gather works by Orazio together and she was responsible for giving the artist his most important English commission. Gentileschi was brought to London in 1626 by the Duke of Buckingham, having previously worked for the Queen's mother, Marie de' Medici, in Paris. By 1642, and probably before the artist's death in early February 1639, the Queen's House had almost become a shrine to his art; it contained the nine ceiling canvases and three large history paintings.

The subject of the ceiling is an allegory of Peace reigning over the Arts. High in the heavens, in the large central scene a personification of Peace with olive branch and staff preside over a gathering of twelve female figures. Directly beneath her is Victory wearing a crown and holding a palm and laurel wreath, her foot resting on a cornucopia from which fruit spills. To her left is the armed fig of Reason, who according to Cesare Ripa's 'Iconologia (the principal source for the allegorical personifications) presides over the realm of human activity. She looks towards a trio of women representing the Trivium of the Liberal Arts: Grammer, who waters and plant with her left hand and with her right holds a rasp (?) to sharpen the sword of Rhetoric, who holds a mirror, and Logic, who has a snake and a small bunch of flowers. Opposite them to the right of the figure of Victory, are the personifications of the Quadrivium: Astronomy, dressed in white with an open book inscribed with the stars: Arithmetic (?) holding a tablet; between them is a hooded figure holding an instrument (?), presumably Music: Geometry holds a sphere and dividers in her left hand and a tablet with geometric figures in her right. The remaining three figures, continuing anti-clockwise, are more difficult to identify, but may be Meditation, with a book: Agriculture (one of the Mechanical Arts), holding a sheaf and wearing a crown of corn: and Fortune, whose attributes are her wings and the globe. The identification of some figures remains disputed.

In the long panels around the central scene are the nine Muses, and in the corners are tondi with the personifications of the arts of Painting, who holds a tablet with a figure of Minerva, Sculpture (with a carved head), Architecture and Music.

The ceiling decoration was presumably completed and in situ by Orazio's death in early February 1639. However, there would have been little chance for the Queen to enjoy the interior she had created as she left for the continent in 1642, on the outbreak of the Civil War. The ceiling canvases may have been removed to St James's Palace, during the Commonwealth, and by the 1710s they had been installed in the ceiling of the Blenheim Saloon at Marlborough House (now the Commonwealth Secretariat). This sadly necessitated cutting the canvases down in order fit smaller compartments and these alterations are clearly visible.

Although it was a generally accepted view that Artemisia, Orazio's daughter worked on the ceiling with her father, Gabriele Finaldi suggests that this is unlikely He may, however, have been assisted by his son Francesco. ('Orazio at the Court of Charles I', National Gallery, 1999). 

The image of the complete ceiling is an attempt at arranging photographic reproductions of the canvases in their original location at The Queen's House during the 1980s.