*Image: The Seven Liberal Arts by Giovanni dal Ponte, c. 1435 [Museo del Prado, Madrid]. Dal Ponte included more than seven figures in his painting to represent the liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic (the trivium) and geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium). He also presents leading figures in each field: Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Cicero, and Aristotle and others. And fifteen angels.
Randall B. Smith is a Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas. …