So wrote the poet Robert Whitehall about the ceiling decoration of the Sheldonian Theatre, the work of Robert Streater (1624-1679), when first unveiled in 1670. A bold if somewhat risible claim, with the clear implication that ‘future ages’ would value the Sheldonian ceiling more highly than the Sistine Chapel. But whatever the artistic merit, Streater’s creation remains to this day a spectacular and eye-catching achievement. The painting is a complex and wide-ranging allegory on an enormous canvas, some 80 feet by 70. At the time, it was the most ambitious ceiling painting executed in England, even more than Rubens’s for the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Robert Streater was the Serjeant Painter to Charles II, a court post both long established and lucrative, though it would seem lacking a clear ‘job description’. It involved painting the royal palaces, coaches and royal barges, as well as creating decorations for royal festivities. Portraiture was also required — thus pictures of monarchs to be sent as gifts to foreign courts.

The post fell out of use in the late 17th century. Streater himself, appointed at the Restoration in 1660, was essentially a topographical and landscape painter and described by Samuel Pepys as ‘a very civil little man and lame but lives handsomely’, a terse and no doubt accurate summary by the great diarist.

Four years ago, the 32 panels of Streater’s ceiling were taken down for conservation and were replaced with hessian sacking.

Over the years the paint had discoloured and faded to a dingy brown or grey. The sky had been painted in a cheap pigment called smalt and had to be repeatedly touched up. The back of the canvas was damaged by leaks and rubbish left by workmen from the past, including a parcel containing a filthy pair of trousers. So restoration began.

The panels had linings replaced, holes in the canvas were fixed and layers of paint removed. Finally, in November last year, the restored ceiling was unveiled to the public.

What did the public see? Well, the same subject matter: Truth still combines with the Arts and Sciences to expel Ignorance from the University, a task successfully accomplished — a less than subtle message that must surely have been a Restoration take on the demise of the recent Commonwealth. What has changed though are the colours: bright blues, reds, crimsons and gold in place of grimy over-painting.

Pink cherubs are shown rolling back awnings, supported on a lattice of gilded ropes, to reveal a vision of Gods, muses and fiends. In the centre Truth descends on a circle of figures that represent the Arts and Sciences studied at the University. Meanwhile Prudence, Fortitude, and Eloquence, in the persons respectively of Minerva, Hercules and Mercury, drive out Envy, Rapine and Brutality. The triumph of academic study is celebrated after the disruption of the English Civil War and Commonwealth.

This is, of course, greatly to oversimplify the subject matter of the 32 panels. It is certainly a hard task on the eye (and the mind) to work out what is happening and why in Streater’s panels but, luckily, Robert Plot, the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, provided a text to the painting.

He wrote: ‘I take the painting of the Theater to be well worth Examination; for in Imitation of the Theaters of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which were too large to be covered with Lead or Tile, so this by the painting of the flat Roof within, is represented open’. He continues: ‘For Joy of this Festival some genii sport about the Clouds, with their festoons of Flowers and Lawrels, viz Honour and Pleasure . . . and that this Assembly might be perfectly happy, their great Enemies and Disturbers, Envy, Rapine and Brutality, are by their opposite Virtues, viz. Prudence, Fortitude and Eloquence driven from Society and thrown Headlong from the Clouds.

Plot then describes each of the panels in detail.

‘Theology holds a book with Seven Seals, Divine Poesy has her harp of David’s fashion and Law, holding the ruling Scepter, is accompanied with Records, Pattents and Evidences on the one side, and on the other Rhetorick. Meanwhile over the entrance of the front of the Theatre three figures are tumbling down, out of the sky. ‘Envy is represented by snaky Hairs, squint Eyes, hags Breasts and rivel’d Skin and Rapine with fiery Eyes, grinning Teeth, sharp Twangs, her hands imbrewed in Blood, holding a Bloody Dagger. Finally, there is brutish, scoffing Ignorance, endeavouring to vilify and contemn what she understands not. ’ This is strong stuff, but strangely the overall effect is less of brutality and triumph than prettiness and surprise, which may be why so many critics over the years have regarded Streater as a second rate painter. Nikolaus Pevsner goes further and writes’ the ceiling is painted by Streater, no one can say in a rousing fashion’. Elsewhere he dismisses his efforts in even brisker fashion and in a single word, ‘poor’, before going on to give similar treatment to the paintings of Isaac Fuller in All Souls chapel, also of the 1660s. But another view is that Streater’s ambitious composition is brilliantly adapted to the architect of the Sheldonian, Christopher Wren, and his conception of the building as a theatre open to the sky.

Seeing the drama and colour of the restored ceiling and comparing it with the brown hessian of the last few years makes one realise again how important Streater’s painting is to the interior of the Sheldonian Theatre — a theatre not as we understand the term today but as a building to house the university’s full dress ceremonial occasions. Until the 1660s, these took place in the university church of St Mary the Virgin. Gilbert Sheldon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not alone in being distressed by the irreverence of the annual university degree ceremony in St Mary’s, known as the Act. Here Terrae-Filius, Son of the Soil, a licensed buffoon spiced the ceremony with a mixture of irreverent and supposedly comical Latin observations on the state of the university. John Evelyn was shocked by what he heard when he attended the Act: ‘Terrae Filius entertained the auditory with a tedious, abusive, sarcastical rhapsody, most unbecoming the gravity of the University. It was rather licentious lying and railing than genuine and noble wit’ Remnants of this ancient custom remain to this day at Encaenia, when amongst other duties the Public Orator also reports on the state of the university. Recent occupants of the post though have had little in common with Terrae Filius, the humour and wit being polished and funny rather than crude and abusive).

Sheldon being a man of power, of wealth and from 1667, Chancellor of the University, decided to act and transfer the ceremony to a secular setting.

And this is where Christopher Wren enters the story.

Wren had matriculated at Wadham College around 1650 and soon proved his brilliant all-round ability as an experimentalist, designer, model-maker and much else.

Elected to a Fellowship of All Souls, he became the Savilian Professor of Astronomy in 1661. His first contribution to Oxford architecture was the sundial designed for All Souls College. His second was the Sheldonian Theatre.

As early as 1663 it was reported that Wren had made a ‘modell of a theatre, to be built for the Oxonian acts, and for playes also’, and it was exhibited at the Royal Society.

The pattern of Wren’s design came from the Roman theatre – he was greatly influenced in the shape of his plan by an illustration of the Theatre of Marcellus in the Forum.

He adopted the Roman D-shaped plan but the open arena was hardly suitable for an Oxford climate. A roof was needed.

But how to build it without load bearing columns in the central area, thus ruining any resemblance to an ancient theatre? Wren hit upon the idea of a roof truss able to span the needed 70 ft. With help from fellow academics, Wren succeeded in this ingenious task and made the Sheldonian renowned as much for its roof construction as anything else. The foundation stone was laid in 1664 and when Gilbert Sheldon’s gift of a £1,000 did not have the required effect of getting others to contribute, he agreed to bear the whole cost of the building, some £12,000.

As John Newman has suggested, the need to scale back the design in line with ‘the limits of a private purse’ undoubtedly bears the marks of compromise. Architecturally it is classical, indeed the first classical building in Oxford and so a breakthrough. It is difficult to call the exterior beautiful, though it is certainly striking. Surprisingly, the façade faces south towards the Divinity School. The north side, the back of the building looking out over the Broad, has been called indeterminate, not always helped architecturally by the long row of much-loved heads of Roman emperors around it. No doubt lack of money played its part, as surely Wren would have wanted to continue the columns and pilasters of the south side right round the building. The south side is indeed far more confident and there’s enough space for the viewer to take the whole of the front in.

This was Wren’s first architectural commission of note and its very imperfections make it a highly interesting building in the career of our greatest architect.

The interior of the Sheldonian, apart from Streater’s ceiling, is a wonderful mixture of boxes, seats and galleries, at present painted in a curious and unusual light coffee or chocolate colour. An open floor is surrounded by pitched benches and a gallery supported by wooden pillars, painted as though marble. The Chancellor’s throne faces the south door, from whence processions enter. The organ is above the door, its case designed by the late Victorian/Edwardian architect, Sir Thomas Jackson, so ubiquitous in the university in his time that the wits suggested that Oxford be re-named Jacksonville. nd a nice touch of ancient Rome are the two Proctor’s boxes or rostra, sporting lion’s heads with mouths full of fasces, or bundles of rods, bound round an axe, symbolic of the Proctors’ disciplinary authority. Four interesting portraits hang at the south end: Christopher Wren himself, Gilbert Sheldon, the Duke of Ormonde, and Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of Durham and founder of the Creweian oration, the record of the university’s year as given at Encaenia. The general sense is of a pleasing interior, perhaps the wrong way round (thus the Chancellor sits among the benches rather than faces them).

Over the years, Truth, Arts, Science, Envy, Rapine and brutish Ignorance have looked down on great as well as comical occasions. Lord Tennyson was given an honorary degree in 1855. Entering the Sheldonian, his locks flowing to his shoulders, a student shouted from the gallery: ‘Did your mother call you early, dear?’ In 1809, two dons voted against an honorary degree for Sheridan, even though The Rivals had been produced there. Nevertheless the playwright turned up at the Sheldonian, much to the pleasure of the undergraduates, who loudly shouted: ‘Sheridan among the Doctors’. Eventually he was given a seat. And when the Duke of Wellington was installed as Chancellor of Oxford in 1834, the whole audience rose to their feet, cheered, waved hats, handkerchiefs and anything else at hand, for some minutes. A witness to the events recorded that the Iron Man seemed quite non-plussed. At last he rose, gave the old military salute and produced a fresh round of cheers.

And I think a fresh round of cheers is in order for the restored Sheldonian ceiling, with the newly glowing cherubs drawing back a vast canopy to reveal a blue Oxford sky and a cast of good and evil, one group upholding learning and other virtues and the other tumbling to oblivion. he building has been likened to a barn and the interior called the most splendid room in Europe.Robert Streater’s ceiling has been compared with Michelangelo and Rubens, as well as roundly disparaged. One way or another, the Sheldonian, with its ceiling, is both a useful building and a talking point, impossible to ignore and hard not to enjoy.