Mike
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Michael S. Mahoney Department of History Princeton University
mike@princeton.edu 303 Dickinson Hall Princeton, NJ 08544
phone 609-258-4157 fax 609-258-5326
WWW Home Page http://www.princeton.edu/~mike
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On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, James A Landau wrote:
>
> On 99-04-20 at 18:24:26 EDT Eisso J. Atzema wrote
>
> > While explaining about trivium and quadrivium in my History of Mathematics
> > class, I showed my students the picture of the quadrivium included in Roger
> > Cooke's History of Mathematics (p.285). According to the caption, this
> > picture is taken from Boethius' Arithmetica and it shows the familiar
> > representation of the four artes comprising the quadrivium by four female
> > figures. Each can be readily identified by their attributes. Besides, the
> > text above their heads (which is mirrored, suggesting that the whole
> > picture is mirrored -- an oversight, Roger?) identifies them as well.
> >
> > Now, Arithmetica clearly betrays herself by representing a number with her
> > one hand (the number 5, if I go by Menninger's History of Numbers). In her
> > other hand, she holds something that looks like an oversized rosary and I
> > suppose this object would have been typical of her "trade" as well. Is
> > there anyone who might be able to say something sensible about what this
> > object is that she holds? While we are at it, I was also wondering what
> > object it is that astronomia/astrologia is holding.
>
> I haven't seen Cooke's book, but on the Internet at
>
> www.cosmopolis.com/muses/liberal-arts.html
>
> (posted by David Fideler, e-mail phanes@cris.com)
>
> there is an illustration of the Seven Liberal Arts (i.e. the Trivium +
> Quadrivium) which seems to match your description. There are seven female
> figures (I will number them left to right as 1 to 7). All except number 4
> are standing. 4 is seated and is holding in her lap something the size and
> shape of a laptop computer with the top folded down. The top of the object
> has parallel lines and small circles on it. 4 is touching the top of the
> object with her right index finger. 5 is holding a harp. 6 is holding what
> I would describe as a cross between a cat's-cradle held vertically and a bad
> drawing of a Coleman lantern; it certainly fits your description "looks like
> an oversized rosary". 7 is holding an armillary sphere.
>
> The caption on the figure reads "LOGICA RHETORICA GRAMA ARITHMETICA
> MVSICA GEOMETRIA ASTRONA". 5 is Mvsica. 7 is Astrona. 1 through 3 are
> easily identified as the Trivium (Logic, Rhetoric, Grammar). Hence it seems
> safe to assume that the figures are in the same order as the names in the
> caption. Therefore 4 is Arithmetica and her "laptop computer" is indeed a
> laptop computer, more specifically an abacus. (She is seated because an
> abacus that size is too clumsy to be held in one hand and operated with the
> other. The artist had to have the abacus resting on something and her lap
> was something that would no clutter up the picture.) That means 6 is
> Geometria and the "oversized rosary" must be a geometric figure of some kind.
> Looking carefully at it, I can make out a tall, narrow isosceles triangle
> which appears to represent a cone.
>
> The same Web site has another illustration of the Seven Liberal Arts,
> apparently depicted in the same left-to-right order. Figure 4 is holding an
> abacus (although the artist carelessly depicted the abacus being held almost
> vertically), figure 6 is holding a carpenter's square (apparently
> representing a right angle) in one hand and a segmented circle in the other,
> and figure 7 is holding a cicle filled with stars.
>
> James A Landau
>