Minneapolis Institute of Art

Grammatica, from The Liberal Arts

Jan Sadeler I; after Maerten de Vos

Date

late 16th century

Medium

Etching

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

This is an allegory, a symbolic picture intended to convey abstract ideas. The old woman in the wicker chair represents the concept of grammar. He instructs the child in the use and rules of language. This will give the child access to the knowledge in the books heaped on the floor. In carefully imparting he knowledge, the woman is like the mother hen who incubates eggs that hold promise life to come. The couple, perhaps the child's parents, enter the room with an egg basket. They will enjoy the bounty of the old woman's teaching, just as one might gather the eggs from a henhouse. Both the old woman and the child wear clothing meant to recall classical antiquity, because Grammar is one of the Seven Liberal Arts outlined by the Roman philosopher Cicero in the fist century BCE, but based on still earlier tradition. This engraving comes from a series meant to depict the arts: grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. Such didactic series poured from the printing presses of 16th-century Antwerp and then many other European capitals when the Dutch revolt upended Antwerp's economy in the 1580s. It is difficult to say where the Jan Sadeler made this print because he worked in Antwerp, Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt, Munich, Verona, and Venice! Maerten de Vos, designer of the images, was a leading artist in Antwerp. In addition to providing designs for some 1600 prints, he gained major commisions to paint replacements for the many pictures destroyed during Protestant uprisings. Flanders

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