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Secondary sourcePainting1503

Typus arithmeticae

Gregor Reisch · 1503

A 1503 woodcut from Gregor Reisch's encyclopedia showing Pythagoras competing on a counting board against Boethius, as rival symbols of calculation.

Pythagoras appears here as a symbolic figure of ancient calculation, shown competing with the medieval scholar Boethius.

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Woodcut from Margarita Philosophica (1503) titled Typus arithmeticae. A crowned female figure labeled Arithmetica stands centrally holding books and scrolls. At left, a seated man writes numerals on a table; at right, a seated man calculates with counters on a reckoning board. Gothic arches frame the scene.
Gregor Reisch, Typus arithmeticae, woodcut from Margarita Philosophica, 1503.

About this source

What it is

This is a woodcut illustration from the Margarita Philosophica, a printed encyclopedia made by Gregor Reisch in 1503. It shows a crowned female figure, Arithmetica, flanked by two men: one writing numerals, the other using a counting board.

Why it matters

By the 1500s, Pythagoras had become a symbol of ancient number skill, placed alongside the medieval scholar Boethius as a figure representing calculation itself. The image shows how later Europeans imagined and used ancient philosophers as teaching tools, long after their actual lives.

Look closer

  • Why might the artist choose to show Pythagoras competing rather than teaching?
  • What does this image tell you about how people in 1503 understood ancient Greek mathematics?
  • Does this picture show what Pythagoras actually looked like, or something else?

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