Temperantia (Temperance), ca. 1560

About the Work

Temperance makes her appearance with a clock on her head, a bridle around her neck, and a pair of spectacles in her hand. She is surrounded by the seven liberal arts, which also require measure and moderation. At the left are arithmetic, music, and rhetoric, at the right grammar, dialectics, and geometry, and in the background—where a man balancing on a globe threatens to lose his footing—astronomy.