The seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages: The development of the liberal arts curriculum and the theme of the arts in medieval religious sculpture

The seven liberal arts first appear in medieval religious sculpture during the eleventh century and continue to appear in a consistent manner well into the Renaissance. This paper attempts to investigate the origins of these figures, the reason for their female nature and the possibility of a standard iconography emerging in the Middle Ages.;In the course of writing this paper, I have investigated the educational systems of ancient Greece and Rome as well as the schools of Europe in the dark ages through Medieval times. I have also studied a set of sculptural representations of the liberal arts, specifically those found at sites in France, Germany and Italy.;I have discovered the origins of the personifications of the liberal arts in the fifth century and revealed that there is a standard iconography in the sculpture of the Middle Ages. I have also endeavored to give a more detailed description of the arts in my examples, since they are generally not clearly described in the present literature.