Allegory of Grammar, 1650 (oil on canvas)

The importance of the intellect was often celebrated in representations of the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music, personified as poised young women in a setting and clothing suggestive of ancient Greece, home of Western abstract thought. To make ideas "bloom," the artist metaphorically represents the liberal art of Grammar watering two pots of flowers. The inscription, L. DE LA Hyre In. & F. 1650 in Latin: invenit (invented) and fecit (made), emphasizes the artist's responsibility for both conception and execution.