LIBERAL ARTS. — The term *liberal arts* refers to the literary and scientific disciplines that, during the Middle Ages, constituted the preparatory education for philosophy and theology. They were divided into two groups: the *trivium* (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the *quadrivium* (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music). The name, transmitted through Latin tradition, derives from Greek (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία), and designates the arts worthy of a free man, in contrast to mercenary and mechanical arts (βάναυσον). This distinction, first appearing in Plato (*Republic*, 405a; 522a), is reiterated by Aristotle, who, in *Politics* (VIII, 2), discussing the education of youth, defines as mechanical any art or discipline that renders a free man unfit for the exercise of virtue. Cicero uses the terms *liberales* or *ingenuae* or *honestae* for the former, and *sordidae* or *inhonestae* for the latter (*De officiis*, I, 42).
Regarding their number, Aristotle (*loc. cit.*) lists as constitutive of the commonly used curriculum in his time: grammar, gnostic science, and music, "to which painting is sometimes added." Cicero, in *De oratore* (III, 32), includes geometry, music, physics, ethics, politics, and the study of letters and poets. Closely aligned with the medieval list is the one provided by Quintilian (*Institutiones oratoriae*, I, 10), who uses the Greek expression ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία (the orbis doctrinae) to designate the whole, a phrase that recalls the ideal and practice of the Hellenistic age. The entire complex is definitively established in the Pseudo-Cebes and the Neoplatonic Porphyry. After Boethius, the cycle of the seven arts, which until then had varied according to cultural ideals, became universally established.
Grammar, from the late Republic and throughout the Empire, had as its main task the teaching of the parts of speech, based on the testimony and authority of the ancients. Varro distinguishes four stages in the study of grammar: *lectio* or reading of classical texts; *emendatio* or literal and literary commentary; *enarratio* or textual and stylistic criticism; and *iudicium* or overall perspective. During the Middle Ages, grammar encompassed the study of ancient and contemporary grammarians and writers. The two works on the eight parts of speech (*Ars minor* and *Ars maior*) by Aelius Donatus, who had been Jerome’s teacher in Rome and the most celebrated grammarian of his time, were widely disseminated and often commented upon. Alongside him, Priscian of Caesarea in Mauretania (c. 500) is well known, primarily for his 18-book work *Institutiones de arte grammatica*. Additionally, alongside writers like Orosius, Gregory of Tours, and Boethius, grammar included the reading of Latin classics such as Virgil, Horace, and Seneca.
Rhetoric held great honor among the Romans. The traditional model of this discipline, aimed at forming the *vir eloquentissimus*, was Greek oratory. The curriculum included a theoretical part concerning the genres of eloquence: epideictic, judicial, deliberative, and its essential components: invention, arrangement, and style; and a practical part consisting of frequent and varied exercises. In the Middle Ages, rhetoric did not hold primary importance. Thierry of Chartres, in his *Heptateuchon*, recalls as preferred models Cicero, Quintilian, and Marius Victorinus.
Of the remaining liberal arts, geometry (Ulpian, *Digest* 5, 13, 1) and especially astronomy seem to have been taught during the Empire. Varro mentions dialectic, arithmetic, and music, adding medicine and architecture. In the Middle Ages, dialectic saw significant development and assumed primary importance in the 11th–12th centuries. While for St. Augustine it was still the science of the laws governing the activity of reason or the art of convincing and confounding an opponent, in the Middle Ages, after the discovery of the entire Aristotelian *Organon*, it gradually enriched and transformed itself, ultimately assuming the characteristics of authentic philosophical speculation. The disciplines of the *quadrivium* had lesser prominence in the Middle Ages, as they inherently required a more specialized technical preparation. The teaching of mathematics and astronomy was based primarily on the works of Boethius, the *Astrolabe* of Gerbert, and the theories of Euclid in the translation by Adelard of Bath.
The medievals found the entire structure of the liberal arts already clearly outlined in Cassiodorus’ *De artibus ac disciplinis liberalium litterarum* (Part I, *pref.*) and *De institutione divinarum litterarum*. These two works, encyclopedic in scope, contributed to spreading that educational program which, later revived and renewed by Isidore of Seville and subsequently by Alcuin, became, in the *Trivium* and *Quadrivium*, the characteristic canon of studies during the Middle Ages. This modest yet significant education, particularly during the early Middle Ages, played an undeniable role in preserving the essential continuity of classical thought and culture for the speculative revival of the 12th–13th centuries.
It was precisely during this period that the expansion of knowledge, following the discovery of the Aristotelian synthesis, led to the gradual devaluation of the *Trivium* and *Quadrivium*. Yet even Dante, according to a plausible interpretation of the allegory, judges the liberal arts an indispensable propaedeutic to human knowledge when he speaks of the noble castle of Limbo, where, with other sages, he must enter through seven gates (*Inf.*, IV, 106–11). In full Humanism, Pier Paolo Vergerio titled his pedagogical work written for Ubertino, son of the lord of Carrara, *De ingenuis ac liberalibus studiis*. However, by this time, the liberal arts had become more expansive, and their purpose no longer centered on forming the orator or philosopher but rather the leader and prince.
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ICONOGRAPHY. — The designation of *liberal arts* sometimes extends beyond those listed in the *Trivium* and *Quadrivium* to include medicine and architecture. Personified by Martianus Capella and his followers as female figures with specific attributes, and as attested by literary sources, the liberal arts appear as early as the Carolingian period. They are depicted in the spirit of medieval encyclopedism on the portals of French Gothic cathedrals (Chartres, Sens, Auxerre), on Nicola Pisano’s pulpit in Siena and Giovanni Pisano’s in Pisa, on the fountain in Perugia, and finally in the atrium of Freiburg Cathedral (c. 1300). The apogee of the encyclopedic concept is demonstrated in the reliefs of Giotto’s bell tower, where the liberal arts are coordinated with the seven virtues, the seven sacraments, the seven planets, the mechanical arts, and representatives of their respective disciplines. Another nearly contemporary encyclopedic composition is found in the Cappellone degli Spagnoli in Santa Maria Novella, where the arts are associated with their celebrated practitioners. From the tomb of Robert of Anjou in Santa Chiara in Naples, the liberal arts are depicted alongside a deceased figure to magnify his virtues, a motif that recurs in the 15th century in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini and in Pollaiuolo’s tomb of Sixtus IV. With some adherence to the medieval concept, the liberal arts appear around St. Thomas in dispute with heretics in Filippino Lippi’s fresco in Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
ART LIBERAL ARTS – Grammar. Collaborators of Andrea Pisano (14th century). Relief in Giotto’s Bell Tower in Florence.
ART LIBERAL ARTS – Geometry – Pinturicchio (15th century). Vatican, Borgia Apartments.
In Rome they assume a purely decorative value, even when related to the setting, as in an inlaid door of the Ducal Palace of Urbino or in the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican (Pinturicchio and other painters) or in the panels attributed to Giusto da Gand. Subsequently, the naturalistic conception that informs painting banishes allegory; for this reason Raphael in *The School of Athens* abandoned the old allegorical scheme, replacing the symbols of the liberal arts with the figures of their greatest exponents only. – *See* Plates VIII-IX.