The Spirit of Justice

This 1850 Spirit of Justice is an allegorical work from Maclise's late career, when he was producing both monumental fresco commissions for the Houses of Parliament and smaller exhibition paintings of allegorical and literary subjects. Personifications of Justice — blindfolded, bearing scales and sword — were among the most traditional subjects of Western European art with continuous institutional demand in legal and governmental contexts. Maclise's treatment brings his characteristic technical virtuosity to a classical subject, producing an allegorical figure that combined academic convention with Victorian pictorial ambition. The 1850 date places this in the productive period surrounding his major Westminster fresco work.

The allegorical figure is rendered with Maclise's strong draftsmanship and sense of sculptural form, the flowing drapery and symbolic attributes depicted with the clarity and precision that characterized his academic style.