The scales of justice are of ancient origin. In ancient Egypt, the heart of a dead person was weighed against the feather of truth in the judgement of their soul. That transferred to the Greek goddess of justice Dike, who judged using a set of scales, and so into the personification of justice in ancient Rome, Iustitia, and her modern descendant Lady Justice, whose statue is mounted on many courts of law.

This triple allegorical portrait of The Virtues: Justice, Charity, and Prudence (Wisdom) (1664) is one of Elisabetta Sirani’s more complex works. This shows Charity nursing children, Justice brandishing a sword and holding a set of scales, while Prudence draws attention to their own images.

Elihu Vedder’s most prominent and lasting achievements are the murals in the Lobby to the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Among them, Corrupt Legislation (1896) is an elaborate composition looking at the consequences of poor government. The central figure is more floozy than goddess, holding a set of scales in her left hand. At the right of the painting, and on that left hand, is a lawyer, with an open book labelled The Law. At his feet, banknotes fall out of an urn, there are small sacks of grain, and a small portable ‘safe’. At the left, apparently pleading with the central figure, is a young girl holding any empty distaff and bobbin for spinning. Behind her are shards from a broken pot, and a broken-down wall.

George Frederic Watts’ Time, Death and Judgement (1900) evolved over a series of versions first started around 1870. Surprisingly, he retained the same composition in all of them, and they differ only in small details. The figure of Time is at the left, holding the traditional scythe; unusually, Watts depicts Time as a young and muscular man, rather than the more conventional ‘Father Time’ with white hair and beard. At the right, Death is a young woman, the lap of her dress containing fading flowers. Time and Death are linked by holding hands. Behind, and towering over them, is the figure of Judgement, holding the scales of justice in her left hand, and brandishing a fiery sword.

Although justice is generally taken to be secular, the concept of weighing the souls of the dead has passed down into some paintings of Christian paradise.

This huge painting of Paradise in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice is seven metres (almost twenty-three feet) high and twenty-two metres (over seventy feet) across, and was probably designed by Jacopo Tintoretto and largely entrusted to his son Domenico and their workshop to paint. In conformity with the rules of the commission, its composition focusses on the Coronation of the Virgin, inspired by Dante’s Paradise, as shown in the detail below.

At the top, the Virgin Mary, behind whom is her traditional symbol of the white lily, stands with Jesus Christ, in their matching red and blue robes. Between them is the white dove of the Holy Ghost, and all around are cherubic heads of infant angels. To the right are the scales of justice, also for the weighing of souls.

This reappears three centuries later in Léon Frédéric’s polyptych All Things Die, But All Will Be Resurrected through God’s Love, painted over the period 1893-1918. Three panels at its right represent Heaven, a pastoral landscape densely packed with a multitude of naked mothers and children. A pair of women in priestly clothing stand at the wings. The figure on the right is holding a stone tablet on which a single word appears: LEX (law), and near her children are playing with the scales of justice. Near the woman at the left two children are swinging censers to generate the smoke of burning incense. Above them all is a double rainbow, and floating in the air the figure of Christ, his arms reaching out over still more figures of children, this time clothed in white robes.

Scales occasionally play a part in legendary history, including the siege of Rome by the Gauls. Conditions drove the Romans trapped in the Capitol to make peace with the Gauls besieged in the rest of the city. Rome was to pay the Gauls a thousand pounds of gold, but even there the Gauls cheated the Romans and tampered with the scales. While this was going on, Camillus entered Rome as its appointed leader, and told the Gauls to quit without any gold, as Rome delivered its city with iron instead.

Francesco de’ Rossi shows this in composite form in his fresco of the Attack on the Gauls who Sacked Rome. In the foreground, the Gauls and Romans are still arguing about the weight of gold, as Camillus’ forces start to take possession of the ruins of what had been Rome.

Finally, scales can appear in their everyday role for weighing out produce in shops and markets.

Léon Augustin Lhermitte’s detailed painting of an Apple Market, Landerneau, Brittany from about 1878 shows sellers ready with their scales in this quiet country town.