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Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts
Salzburg, Austria, 1150–60
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, M. 982
Though a number of fine, fully painted manuscripts can be associated with scriptoria in Salzburg, a noteworthy appreciation for the linear effects of drawing emerges around the middle of the twelfth century. This drawing, now excised from an unknown tome, presents the unusual iconography of a regal Philosophy presiding over personifications of the Liberal Arts, each bearing an attribute. It attests to both the learned concerns of medieval monastic audiences in the Salzburg region and to the iconographic innovations engendered by those interests.