Classical world . Early modern statues with classical
iconography. Personification as an artistic device is easier to discuss when belief in the personification as an actual spiritual being has died down; this seems to have happened in the ancient Graeco-Roman world, probably even before
Christianisation. In other cultures, especially
Hinduism and
Buddhism, many personification figures still retain their religious significance, which is why they are not covered here. For example,
Bharat Mata was devised as a Hindu goddess figure to act as a national personification by intellectuals in the
Indian independence movement from the 1870s, but now has some actual
Hindu temples. Personification is found very widely in classical literature, art and drama, as well as the treatment of personifications as relatively minor deities, or the rather variable category of
daemons. In classical Athens, every geographical division of the state for local government purposes had a personified deity which received some cultic attention, as well as
Demos, a male personification for the governing assembly of free citizens, and
Boule, a female one for the ruling council. These appear in art but are often hard to identify if not labelled.
Personification in the Bible is mostly limited to passing phrases which can probably be regarded as literary flourishes, with the important and much-discussed exception of
Wisdom in the
Book of Proverbs, 1–9, where a female personification is treated at some length, and makes speeches. The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the
Book of Revelation can be regarded as personification figures, although the text does not specify what all personify. According to James J. Paxson in his book on the subject "
all personification figures prior to the sixth century A.D. were ... female"; but major rivers have male personifications much earlier, and are more often male, which often extends to "Water" in the
Four Elements. The predominance of females is at least partly because
Latin grammar gives nouns for abstractions the female gender. Pairs of
winged victories decorated the
spandrels of Roman
triumphal arches and similar spaces, and
ancient Roman coinage was an especially rich source of images, many carrying their name, which was helpful for medieval and Renaissance antiquarians. Sets of representing the major cities of the empire were used in the
decorative arts. Most imaginable virtues and virtually every
Roman province was personified on coins at some point, the provinces often initially seated dejected as "CAPTA" ("taken") after its conquest, and later standing, creating images such as
Britannia that were often revived in the Renaissance or later.
Lucian (2nd century AD) records a detailed description of a lost painting by
Apelles (4th century BC) called the
Calumny of Apelles, which some Renaissance painters followed,
most famously Botticelli. This included eight personifications of virtues and vices: Hope, Repentance, Perfidy, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance, Suspicion, as well as two other figures.
Platonism, which in some manifestations proposed systems involving numbers of spirits, was
naturally conducive to personification and allegory, and is an influence on the uses of it from classical times through various revivals up to the
Baroque period.
Literature ", helped by four other personifications, turns
her wheel. English miniature for
John Lydgate's
Troy Book, 15th-century. According to Andrew Escobedo, "literary personification marshalls inanimate things, such as passions, abstract ideas, and rivers, and makes them perform actions in the landscape of the narrative." He dates "the rise and fall of its [personification's] literary popularity" to "roughly, between the fifth and seventeenth centuries". Late antique philosophical books that made heavy use of personification and were especially influential in the
Middle Ages included the
Psychomachia of
Prudentius (early 5th century), with an elaborate plot centered around battles between the virtues and vices, and
The Consolation of Philosophy () by
Boethius, which takes the form of a dialogue between the author and "Lady Philosophy".
Fortuna and the
Wheel of Fortune were prominent and memorable in this, which helped to make the latter a favourite medieval trope. Both authors were Christians, and the origins in the pagan classical religions of the standard range of personifications had been left well behind. A medieval creation was the
Four Daughters of God, a shortened group of virtues consisting of: Truth, Righteousness or Justice, Mercy, and Peace. There were also the
seven virtues, made up of the four classical
cardinal virtues of
prudence,
justice,
temperance and
courage (or fortitude), these going back to
Plato's
Republic, with the three
theological virtues of
faith,
hope and
charity. The
seven deadly sins were their counterparts. s, carrying Chastity and Love, from a lavish
illuminated manuscript (early 16th century) of
Petrach's
Triomphi The major works of
Middle English literature had many personification characters, and often formed what are called "personification allegories" where the whole work is an allegory, largely driven by personifications. These include
Piers Plowman by
William Langland (–90), where most of the characters are clear personifications named as their qualities, and several works by
Geoffrey Chaucer, such as
The House of Fame (1379–80). However, Chaucer tends to take his personifications in the direction of being more complex characters and give them different names, as when he adapts part of the French
Roman de la Rose (13th century). The English
mystery plays and the later
morality plays have many personifications as characters, alongside their biblical figures.
Frau Minne, the spirit of
courtly love in German medieval literature, had equivalents in other vernaculars. In
Italian literature Petrach's
Triomphi, finished in 1374, is based around a procession of personifications carried on "cars", as was becoming fashionable in courtly festivities; it was illustrated by many different artists.
Dante has several personification characters, but prefers using real persons to represent most sins and virtues. In
Elizabethan literature many of the characters in
Edmund Spenser's enormous epic
The Faerie Queene, though given different names, are effectively personifications, especially of virtues. ''
The Pilgrim's Progress'' (1678) by
John Bunyan was the last great personification allegory in English literature, from a strongly Protestant position (though see Thomson's
Liberty below). A work like
Shelley's
The Triumph of Life, unfinished at his death in 1822, which to many earlier writers would have called for personifications to be included, avoids them, as does most Romantic literature, apart from that of
William Blake. Leading critics had begun to complain about personification in the 18th century, and such "complaints only grow louder in the nineteenth century". According to Andrew Escobedo, there is now "an unstated scholarly consensus" that "personification is a kind of frozen or hollow version of literal characters", which "depletes the fiction".
Visual arts '', –45,
Agnolo Bronzino. Personifications, often in sets, frequently appear in
medieval art, often illustrating or following literary works. The virtues and vices were probably the most common, and the virtues appear in many large sculptural programmes, for example the exteriors of
Chartres Cathedral and
Amiens Cathedral. In painting, both virtues and vices are personified along the lowest zone of the walls of the
Scrovegni Chapel by
Giotto (), and are the main figures in
Ambrogio Lorenzetti's
Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338–39) in the
Palazzo Pubblico of
Siena. In the
Allegory of Bad Government Tyranny is enthroned, with Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory above him. Beside him on the magistrate's bench sit Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War, while Justice lies tightly bound below. The so-called
Mantegna Tarocchi (–75) are sets of fifty educational cards depicting personifications of social classes, the planets and heavenly bodies, and also social classes. A new pair, once common on the portals of large churches, are
Ecclesia and Synagoga. Death envisaged as a skeleton, often with a
scythe and
hour-glass, is a late medieval innovation, that became very common after the
Black Death. However, it is rarely seen in
funerary art "before the
Counter-Reformation". When not illustrating literary texts, or following a classical model as Botticelli does, personifications in art tend to be relatively static, and found together in sets, whether of statues decorating buildings or paintings, prints or media such as porcelain figures. Sometimes one or more virtues take on and invariably conquer vices. Other paintings by Botticelli are exceptions to such simple compositions, in particular his
Primavera and
The Birth of Venus, in both of which several figures form complex allegories. An unusually powerful single personification figure is depicted in
Melencolia I (1514) an
engraving by
Albrecht Dürer.
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time () by
Agnolo Bronzino has five personifications, apart from Venus and Cupid. In all these cases, the meaning of the work remains uncertain, despite intensive academic discussion, and even the identity of the figures continues to be argued over. ==Theory==