The foundations of Temperance’s visuality. Formation of it iconographic typology until the 14th century

Abstract

Temperance, as one of Cardinal Virtues, has been object of thinking by thinkers since Antiquity, when the bases of this concept was stablished. Despite the absence of some clear visual precedents, Temperance set up its visuality in Middle Ages like the other Cardinal Virtues. However, that absence was reason of a great variety of iconic concretions of this virtue through different and numerous attributes. The famous “iconologies” don’t gather the majority of these attributes and iconographic types, nor bibliography about it. For these reasons, we propose a diachronic study of Temperance’s visuality from its origins until 14^th century, attending to the meaning of its attributes as from written sources. Moreover, attributes combinations let us to offer a proposal of classification of the Temperance’s iconographic types more frequents, concreted from theoretical considerations of the concept.