# Woman teaching geometry

- By: Attributed to Meliacin Master
- Date: between 1309 and 1316
- Classification: Painting
- 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…
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_teaching_geometry.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Woman_teaching_geometry.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.