Astrology (from the Tarocchi, series C: Liberal Arts, #29)

1467

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Renaissance Renaissance Allegory Ferrara

Dominant colour

Astrology (from the Tarocchi, series C: Liberal Arts, #29) is a 1467 by Master of the E-Series Tarocchi, a Renaissance work, depicting Ferrara, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Master of the E-Series Tarocchi
When & what style?: 1467 · Renaissance
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

A woman sits at a desk, studying a star chart. Above her, a blue circle shows zodiac signs like Aries and Cancer. She holds a tool that looks like a compass. This print is part of a 15th-century series showing the seven liberal arts, once key subjects for education in Europe. Here, astronomy stands for human efforts to understand the skies using math and observation. The scene reflects how people in 15th century Italy linked science, belief, and the stars. (Word count: 86)

The story of this work

Overview

This engraving is part of the group “C” named Liberal Arts . Conceptually, the liberal arts descended from classical antiquity, and were divided into the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic or Logic) and the Quadrivium (Music, Geometry, Arithmetic, and Astronomy). In the Tarocchi set the total number was risen to ten, with the addition of the three disciplines (Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology). The liberal arts denoted knowledge or skills considered necessary to participate in a free society. By the late Middle Ages, they began to be represented in the visual arts as womanlike…

Read the full account in the museum source.