Allegorische Frauenfigur (Geographie) mit Putten auf Wolken 

Gaspare Diziani made this drawing titled, Allegorical Figure of a Woman (Geography) with Putti on Clouds, sometime between 1704 and 1767 using pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash over pencil. It is an allegory, a symbolic representation of an abstract concept. In this case, geography is personified through a female figure, surrounded by putti, those chubby cherubic figures that populate much art of the time. Diziani was working during the height of the Enlightenment, a period where reason, science, and knowledge became the presiding values of the West. But notice how the female figure is literally elevated, placed above us in the clouds. Who had access to geography, to the mapping of the world? Whose knowledge counted? Whose didn’t? In this drawing, Diziani reminds us that knowledge, like geography, is always situated. It always comes from somewhere, and someone.