La Prosperidad o la Virtud ahuyentando los Males

This canvas was made to be looked at from underneath. It is a ceiling piece, which is why every figure is drawn in steep foreshortening and why the bottom of it is a heap of backs and legs sliding out of the frame. Venice turned that problem into a whole branch of painting, canvases fitted into wooden compartments overhead. The museum reads the flying figure in the gilded breastplate as a matron in a helmet, a caduceus in one hand and ears of wheat in the other, the signs of trade and of fields that yield. What scatters in front of her are four named vices, Lust, Theft, Treachery and Rancour. One of them falls away still holding a key. The Prado fixes no year at all, placing the canvas anywhere between the last quarter of the 16th century and the first third of the 17th. Up in the right corner, carried on a pole, is a round shield with a gorgon's face.