“Quadrivium“, Septem Artes Liberales two coin series, 2000 Francs CFA, Republic of Cameroon 2022, 2 oz, 45 mm, antique finish ultra high relief coin, unique decorative coating and gilding, client and producer: Mint of Poland.”Quadrivium, Septem Artes Liberales two coin series, 2000 Francs CFA, Republic of Cameroon 2022, 2 oz, 45 mm, antique finish ultra high relief coin, unique decorative coating and gilding, client and producer: Mint of Poland.
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Hurray, this time not antiquity but the Middle Ages! 🙂 I do love Middle Ages! I studied a medieval history of art and iconography.
Septem artes liberales or seven liberal arts were the great academic „skills”of the European medieval education. Four of them: arithmetica, geometria, musica, astronomia were the main skills, known as the quadrivium. Thanks to the quadrivium, the human mind could rise to a higher level—to the philosophy level! The remaining three lower liberal arts: grammatica, rhetorica, dialectica were called trivium.
On the reverse of the coin: four allegories of the Quadrivium team are looking at each other. The Geometry holds a wire sphere and a compass. Her right hand rests on the cube. There is a protractor on the floor. Arithmetic counts on the Napier’s bones (very smart calculating device even if it’s not strictly medieval) and on the abacus (invented by ancient Egyptians, in China known as suanpan). The Music is singing and she plays the medieval harp. We see a gittern at her feet. An astrolabe and a parchment with a solar system drawn on it, are two symbols of the Astronomy.
On the obverse we see a medieval rosette with septem artes liberales scheme. This is an allusion to a very famous illustration in Hortus deliciarum (Garden of Delights) a known medieval book by abbess Herrad of Landsberg.
