Minerva in Her Study

Rembrandt painted Minerva, the virgin goddess of war, wisdom, art, medicine, spinning, and weaving, in 1635, the very year that he established his own studio in Amsterdam. Rembrandt depicted the goddess as a scholar who has paused from reading the large folio before her to look toward the viewer. He has also included her various other attributes—a laurel wreath crowning her golden locks, a globe, a helmet, and a gorgon-headed shield. This grand masterpiece is the culmination of a series of closely related history paintings of female heroes from antiquity that Rembrandt executed in the mid-1630s. This series of works helped establish Rembrandt’s reputation as a history painter, which he and his contemporaries regarded as the highest expression of artistic accomplishment.

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