Peter Paul Rubens, 'The Apotheosis of the Duke of Buckingham', before 1625

In this exuberant picture, Rubens seems to suggest that apotheosis – a person being elevated to divine status – is not a wholly majestic and dignified affair, as it is represented in many other contemporary paintings. Here, it seems that any great man taken to heaven and granted immortality by the gods has quite a journey ahead of him. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, dressed in a seventeenth-century version of Roman armour, is hauled up through the sky in a swirl of moving figures, his sword dangling below him.

The strong red of the Duke’s billowing red cloak outlines him, emphasising his position at the centre of the figures that spin around him in a kaleidoscope of gold, cream, ochre and rosy pink. Two mythical beings give him a leg up from below, giving the impression that it’s no easy task. One of them casts a nervous eye over his shoulder at the threatening lion just entering the fray. Below the Duke, the allegorical figure of Envy reaches up to pull him down. Minerva, goddess of war and wisdom, and Mercury, the messenger of the gods, lead the Duke onward and upwards. On the left, the nude figures of the Three Graces reach up to hold out a crown of flowers towards the Duke, but his eyes are turned up towards his goal, high above on the left: the Temple of Virtue. There, Virtue and perhaps Abundance (the figure is not yet positively identified) await his arrival. All around, naked putti dance and caper or blow trumpets at the clouds, adding to the excitement and commotion of the scene.

This is a preparatory oil sketch for a painting intended to decorate a ceiling, as the circular form and the skilful foreshortening of the figures indicate. Rubens had met Buckingham in 1625 in Paris, where the Duke was attending the marriage by proxy of Charles I of England to Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France. In 1627, Buckingham commissioned the painting along with an equestrian portrait of himself for York House, his London residence.

A favourite of both Charles I and his father James I and VI, Buckingham clearly saw himself as almost as powerful as royalty. At one time it was supposed that the Apotheosis had been painted in 1628, after Buckingham’s assassination. It is now generally agreed that during his lifetime the flamboyant Duke liked the idea of an image that showed him being transported to heaven by the gods like a king, unaware that his death was closer than he thought. The painting outlived the Duke by around 400 years, but both ceiling and portrait were destroyed by fire in 1949 – only this spectacular picture survives.