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Antoni van Leest, Toneel met personificatie van de Rechtvaardigheid (Justitia). Antwerp, 1578. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Contrast this depiction of a theatrical representation of Justice staged for the arrival of Archduke Matthias of Austria in Brussels in 1578, brought over by Catholic nobles to counterbalance the rising Protestant influence with the arrival of the Calvinist William of Orange in 1577. The elegant isolation of the figure preserves its symbolic and iconographical associations with grace, balance and equity, on an ideal rather than practical or socially realistic plane.

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