03 — ARTWORK
Fontana Maggiore: Liberal Arts
- MEDIUM
- Bronze and marble
- TYPE
- Other
PALETTE
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THIS REPRODUCTION
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CURRENT LOCATION · Piazza IV Novembre
- FILE
- 1300 × 931 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The lowest basin is a 25-sided polygon with 3 twisted columns at the corners. Each side bears two reliefs, representing the Labours of the Months, the Liberal ArtsThese represented the subject matter of the secular 'arts' syllabus of the Middle Ages; first the preparatory trivium - grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, then the basis of a philosophical training, the quadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. By the 13th century each had been given a pictorial identity, together with identifying attributes (e.g. a measuring rod for geometry) and exemplars (e.g. Pythagoras for arithmetic, Tubal for music).While treated with a stylistic variety that reflected current pictorial concerns, whether with iconographic completeness (Andrea da Firenze in the Spanish Chapel at S. Maria Novella in Florence), or with narrative (Pinturicchio in the Vatican) or with the nude (Pollaiuolo's tomb of Sixtus IV in St Peter's), the theme was left remarkably intact by artists whose own activity (save through the mathematics of perspective) was excluded from it as manual rather than liberal., fables, Romulus and Remus (originals Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia), heraldic beasts, and Old Testament scenes.
The picture shows two of the Seven Liberal arts: Grammar and Logic.
OTHER WORKS BY GIOVANNI PISANO
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-re6daf9a44aeedc,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Fontana Maggiore: Liberal Arts by PISANO, Giovanni},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/pisano-giovanni-r1e2bda68beedd5/fontana-maggiore-liberal-arts-re6daf9a44aeedc},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.