Back in college, a teacher told me that Lady Justice was not blindfolded until an artist wanted to make a political statement. It was something along the lines of justice was being blind to agony she was causing or she couldn't bear to look at the harm she was causing.
Over time, Justice being blind, took on a different meaning, but does anyone have more information about the original artist who depicted her with a blindfold?
The origin - and original meaning - of the blindfold for Lady Justice is not clear. First, it is clear that justice was originally depicted without a blindfold, and it is equally clear that even in recent times, the blindfold was often omitted. In 1543, she appeared with a blindfold in a statue in Berne, Switzerland - this is one of the first manifestations of this motif. At roughly the same time in the sixteenth century, German artists began depicting Justice as having a blindfold and bungling about, satire to describe an inept system exhibited in the courts.
Despite the seeming negative implications of being blindfolded, the motif became central to the idea of Justice being impartial. I have never heard of reference to agony and harm. That seems to me to be an after-the-fact interpretation. The blindfold, which seems to date to the sixteenth century has been consistently linked to impartiality - except when it has been used in satire, which is a different process.