[Allegory: Nature stands ready to strike the lyre, as Liberty presents medal to Washington; Fame blows her trumpet, and Astrea finds a part of the earth where she may fix her residence]

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Few prints of the period cast Washington as a figure in classical allegory, but this engraving does. Liberty presents a medal to him while Nature reaches for a lyre and Fame sounds a trumpet, and Astraea, the goddess of justice who in myth left a corrupt earth, looks for a place where she can settle. The print appeared in the Boston Magazine in April 1784, the year after the Revolutionary War ended, when Americans were eager to cast their new nation as a refuge for virtue. The engraver, John Norman, was an English-born artist who produced many prints of American subjects, and this one shows how allegory was used to explain the war's outcome to a public that had just won its independence.

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