Grammatica

The Seven Liberal Arts, classical in origin but also reflecting the medieval universities’ division of knowledge into distinct branches, appear in art as allegorical figures holding attributes of their respective fields. Grammatica (grammar) and Dialectica (dialectic) are traditionally the first two of the liberal arts; the full set of seven would have included the other element of the trivium, rhetoric; and the four elements of the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Grammatica holds a tablet inscribed with the alphabet, the building blocks of writing, in her right hand; in her left is a key, suggesting that language is the key to all knowledge. It is an indication of this subject matter’s popularity that Georg Pencz, a fellow "Little Master," also made a printed series of the Seven Liberal Arts, in 1541.