Allegory of the Sciences

Some time between 1675 and 1683 the Amsterdam textile magnate Philips de Flines had Gerard de Lairesse decorate a special art room in his house on the Herengracht. The painter made five tall canvases in grisaille, painting only in greys so that they read as carved stone, and each one celebrated a good quality of the owner. This one is about the sciences, since supporting learning was a gentleman's virtue. A woman in a helmet stands at the centre among other female figures, one of them holding up a board with a drawing, while a seated woman leans on a chair carved with a mask. At the bottom a snake coils around a shield. The canvas is almost three metres high, and it came to the Rijksmuseum in 1970 together with the other four from the series, from a family collection in Paris.