Woman teaching geometry
between 1309 and 1316
- Classification
- Painting
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- This file has been provided by the British Library from its digital collections. Links to the British Library's website may be broken as the library recovers from a October 2023 cyber attack, and will be updated once material becomes…
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
About this work
Detail of a scene in the bowl of the letter 'P' with a woman with a set square and dividers; using a compass to measure distances on a diagram. In her left hand she holds a square, an implement for testing or drawing right angles. She is watched by a group of students. In the Middle Ages, it is unusual to see women represented as teachers, in particular when the students appear to be monks. She is most likely the personification of Geometry, based on Martianus Capella's famous book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, [5th c.] a standard source for allegorical imagery of the seven liberal arts. Illustration at the beginning of Euclid's Elements, in the translation attributed to Adelard of Bath.
