Securitas Publica

James Thornhill · 1718/25

Medium

Pen and brown ink with brush and green wash, heightened with white gouache, over graphite, on tan wove paper, laid down on board

Original size

25 × 11.7 cm (9 7/8 × 4 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Securitas Publica is a luminous preparatory drawing by Sir James Thornhill, its layered washes and white gouache highlights revealing the careful orchestration behind one of Britain's greatest Baroque decorative schemes. Thornhill was the dominant figure in English monumental painting during the early eighteenth century, celebrated for his sweeping illusionistic compositions at the Painted Hall in Greenwich and the interior of St Paul's Cathedral dome. Drawings like this one show how he worked out his allegorical programs in intimate detail before committing them to vast architectural surfaces — the pen lines providing structure, the green wash adding atmospheric depth, the white gouache catching the light that would later be amplified a hundredfold in the finished ceiling. The subject, Securitas Publica, or Public Security, was the kind of civic allegory Thornhill returned to throughout his career, well-suited to the Baroque taste for figures embodying virtuous ideals. Thornhill was knighted in 1723, becoming the first British-born painter to receive that honour — a mark of how seriously his contemporaries took decorative painting as an art form. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Thornhill's delicate draughtsmanship into the richness of oil on canvas, preserving the dynamism of his compositional thinking while giving the work a warmth and presence suited to display in any room.