Iustitia

A muscular female figure stands within an arched niche, personifying the virtue of Justice. She holds a large, upright sword in her right hand and a pair of scales in her left, representing her power to punish and her duty to weigh evidence fairly. The print exhibits the elongated proportions and heavy musculature typical of late sixteenth-century Dutch Mannerism.

As one of the four Cardinal Virtues, Justice was central to Renaissance Neoplatonism and moral philosophy, representing the harmonious ordering of the soul as described in the works of Plato and Cicero. This engraving belongs to a series of virtues that served as mnemonic and meditative aids for the cultivation of ethical character in the humanist tradition.