The Four Elements: Fire

Fire is one of four women on these walls who each stand for an element. She holds a large vessel against her side, with a small flame and smoke rising from its mouth. Fire of a more everyday kind left its own mark on this room. When conservators cleaned Pellegrini's canvases in a restoration finished in 2014, they found an unexplained grey haze on the paint once the old varnish came off. Tests carried out with the Shell Technology Centre traced it to the wood and coal stoves that had once been used to heat the Golden Room.