Between August 1774 and July 1776, Virginia held five Revolutionary Conventions. These conventions selected and instructed the Virginia delegates to Congress, organized military preparation, arranged economic embargoes of British goods, and formed the Virginia Committee of Safety that governed Virginia in the absence of the royal governor in 1775–1776.
At the Fifth Virginia Convention that began meeting in May 1776, George Mason, spokesman for the committee that included Richard Henry Lee, George Wythe, and Robert Carter Nicholas, proposed the design for the great seal of the Commonwealth on July 5, 1776.1 The Latin Sic Semper Tyrannis (“Thus Always to Tyrants”) chosen for the obverse, or front, of the seal became the state motto. In 1779, the General Assembly changed the inscription on the reverse of the seal to the Latin Perseverando (“By Persevering”).
The designer of the seal was not identified, although George Wythe was almost certainly the committee member primarily responsible for its design. An attorney and former member and clerk of the House of Burgesses, he was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and was elected to Virginia’s Fourth and Fifth Revolutionary Conventions.
The State seal used until 1779, when the General Assembly passed an act to create a new great seal while this remained in use as the lesser seal.
Records Relating to the Publication of ``The Seals of Virginia`` by the Virginia State Library Board, 1903–1911, Accession 28415, Library of Virginia.
The convention directed Wythe and John Page to supervise the engraving of the seal, which was hampered by the need for engravers to produce plates for making paper money. The seal was completed in Philadelphia and not delivered to Virginia’s government until 1778.
These renderings for the state seal with the original motto of Deus Nobis Haec Otia Fecit (God has made this ease) on the reverse are identified as possibly attributed to the well-known artist Benjamin West. Although they did not precisely follow the 1776 description, sculptor Alexander Galt used the drawings when he designed a new state seal in 1856.
Records Relating to the Publication of ``The Seals of Virginia`` by the Virginia State Library Board, 1903–1911, Accession 28415, Library of Virginia.
Artistic renderings of the seal varied during the first century and a half of the seal’s use. By 1930 more than a dozen variants were in use by different state agencies. The General Assembly appointed a committee to determine “the correct form and type of the State seal as adopted by the Constitutional Convention of seventeen hundred and seventy-six” and approved the following “accurate and faithful description of the great seal of this Commonwealth, as it was intended to be by Mason and Wythe and their associates”:
The great seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia shall consist of two metallic discs, two inches and one-fourth in diameter, with an ornamental border one-fourth of an inch wide, with such words and figures engraved thereon as will, when used, produce impressions to be described as follows: On the obverse, Virtus, the genius of the Commonwealth, dressed as an Amazon, resting on a spear in her right hand, point downward, touching the earth; and holding in her left hand, a sheathed sword, or parazonium, pointing upward; her head erect and face upturned; her left foot on the form of Tyranny represented by the prostrate body of a man, with his head to her left, his fallen crown near by, a broken chain in his left hand, and a scourge in his right. Above the group and within the border conforming therewith, shall be the word “Virginia,” and, in the space below, in a curved line, shall be the motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” On the reverse, shall be placed a group consisting of Libertas, holding a wand and pileus in her right hand; on her right, Aeternitas, with a globe and phoenix in her right hand; on the left of Libertas, Ceres, with a cornucopia in her left hand, and an ear of wheat in her right; over this device in a curved line, the word “Perseverando.”
Artists preparing the current depiction of the great seal of the Commonwealth in accord with the 1930 act of assembly used leaves of the Virginia creeper as the prescribed ornamental border.
Governor Francis H. Pierpont ordered that a new seal be struck in 1865 that with the words ``Liberty or Union.``
New seals were created in 1884 and closely replicated the 1776 description with the 1779 motto Perseverando on the reverse.
The obverse and reverse of the flat form of the state seal as adopted by the Virginia Art Commission in 1930.
The original design closely followed generally accepted elements in its depiction of the various figures. The Roman deity Virtus, as described in Bell’s New Pantheon; or, Historical Directory of the Gods, Demi-Gods, Heroes, and Fabulous Personages of Antiquity, published in London in 1790, was traditionally depicted “dressed like a woman, or rather like an Amazon, for she is generally represented as a military lady.” Her attire in particular was meant to show “her character of readiness for action, and her look a firmness and resolution not to be conquered by any difficulties or dangers that may meet her in her way.”
The reverse of the seal featured three standing figures. Libertas, a Roman deity of liberty, was most often pictured clothed in white and holding “the rudis, or wand, and in her right hand the cap of freedom,” both of which “refer to the customs of the Romans in setting their slaves free.” Ceres, daughter of Saturn and a sister of Vesta (goddess of the hearth) had “blessed man with the art of cultivating the earth, having not only taught them to plow and to sow, but also to reap, harvest, and thresh out their grain,” and, in a practical vein, had taught mankind to “fix limits or boundaries to ascertain their possessions.” Aeternitas was the deity of eternity, usually depicted as a woman, and traditionally accompanied by “a bird, supposed to be a phoenix,” as a symbol of immortality. She was also generally pictured holding a small globe, as a sign of her “sovereignty over all.” Those who designed the seal did not, however, follow form in every instance. As she signified eternity, Aeternitas ordinarily wore “a covering on her head, because we can never find her beginning,” and raiment that bared her legs “because we can see only those parts of her that are actually running on.” The latter symbolic element was incorporated, but the former was not. The Virginia committee may have decided that the beginning was indeed known: 1607.
The state seal has long been used decoratively for non-official purposes. The Code of Virginia currently allows the state seal to be authorized for commercial purposes when its use appropriately promotes Virginia's history and heritage.
William Cole Collection of Virginia State Seals, Special Collections, Library of Virginia.
No words or imagery on the seal made reference to or condemned the chains and tyranny that white enslavers imposed on enslaved Black Virginians.
The great seal of the Commonwealth is affixed to documents signed by the governor and intended for use before tribunals and for purposes outside the jurisdiction of Virginia. A smaller version of the obverse of the great seal—one and nine-sixteenths inches in diameter—is used as the lesser seal of the Commonwealth on other documents issued by authority of the governor as well as to authenticate the official signature of the secretary of the commonwealth.
Learn more about the history of the state seal in the Winter 1952 issue of Virginia Cavalcade, available online at the Internet Archive.
