{"id":7802,"date":"2026-04-16T14:19:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=7802"},"modified":"2026-04-29T04:20:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T08:20:03","slug":"daughters-of-athena-expressing-kinship-support-and-admiration-amongst-netherlandish-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2026\/04\/16\/daughters-of-athena-expressing-kinship-support-and-admiration-amongst-netherlandish-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughters of Athena: Expressing Kinship, Support, and Admiration Amongst Netherlandish Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Annelies Verellen<\/span><\/h4>\n

In 1620, the prolific author, engraver, and printmaker Anna Roemers Visscher (1583\u2013<\/span>1651) dedicated a poem to thirteen-year-old Anna Maria van Schurman (1607\u2013<\/span>1678), who had attracted praise and attention for her formidable achievements in the arts. After extensively praising Van Schurman for her noble pursuit of learning as a young \u201cmaiden\u201d and applauding her understanding of multiple ancient languages, Visscher turned her focus to Van Schurman\u2019s creative capabilities:<\/span><\/p>\n

When with your needle you work linen,<\/span>
\nOr paper with charcoal,<\/span>
\nSo that artists stand amazed,<\/span>
\nAnd liken you to Pallas.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Visscher generously commends Van Schurman\u2019s promising talent and supports her creative and intellectual endeavours, comparing the younger artist to Athena, pagan goddess of warfare, the arts, and wisdom, who is mentioned here by her epithet \u201cPallas.\u201d2<\/sup> Visscher\u2019s praise not only affirms Van Schurman\u2019s talents but also signals the pagan deity as a powerful model of emulation for Netherlandish women artists, writers, and patrons. Through this poetic gesture, Visscher initiated a form of intergenerational female support that framed women\u2019s creative and intellectual achievements as both legitimate and admirable. The invocation of the goddess Athena suggests that Netherlandish women could imagine themselves as heirs to a classical tradition that fused learning, artistry, and moral authority by embracing rather than renouncing their femininity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poem demonstrates how Athena\u2019s symbolic power fostered networks of admiration, kinship, and mutual recognition among early modern women. By aligning Van Schurman with the pagan deity, Visscher effectively situates her within a shared feminine genealogy of excellence. In what follows, I propose that such symbolic identification allowed early modern women to celebrate one another\u2019s accomplishments while countering dominant discourses that framed artistic genius and intellectual rigor as inherently masculine traits.3<\/sup>\u00a0By examining women\u2019s citation of Athena in panegyrics and historiated portraits, this paper demonstrates how the warrior-goddess emerged as a figure through whom Netherlandish women claimed authority, strength, and creativity as feminine virtues.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 1. Ferdinand Bol (1616\u2013<\/strong>1680). Allegory of Education, Margarita Trip teaching her sister Anna Maria Trip<\/em> (1663). Oil on Canvas. 81.9 x 70.5 in. (208 x 179 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image provided by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Women\u2019s invocation of Athena found visual expression in portraiture in the second half of the 17th<\/sup>\u00a0century. In 1663, Margarita Trip (1640\u2013<\/span>1714), daughter of the prominent Amsterdam arms dealer Louis Trip, commissioned Ferdinand Bol to paint her with her younger sister Anna Maria Trip (1652\u20131681) in an Allegory of Education <\/em>(fig.1).4<\/sup> In this life-size portrait, Bol depicts Margarita in the guise of Athena as she instructs her sister, presenting education as both a moral duty and a familial bond. Margarita\u2019s role as teacher is emphasized by her posture and expression: she parts her lips as if mid-instruction and gazes attentively at Anna Maria, who leans toward her while holding a book. The sisters\u2019 physical closeness conveys tenderness and affection, underscoring the emotional dimension of Margarita\u2019s assumed pedagogical role. Anna Maria, in contrast, turns her gaze toward the viewer, her expression suggesting youthful curiosity and innocence. By representing Margarita as Athena, Bol visualizes education as a heroic and protective undertaking, aligning female instruction with divine wisdom and authority. She wears Athena\u2019s armor, including a plumed helmet and breastplate, thereby assuming the goddess\u2019s dual identity as patron of wisdom and war.5 <\/sup>This martial imagery transforms the act of educating a younger sister into a form of moral guardianship and defense. The protective dimension of Margarita\u2019s role is further emphasized through the recurring motif of the female gorgon Medusa.6<\/sup> Medusa\u2019s head appears both on a large shield leaning against a classical column and on Margarita\u2019s breastplate. Significantly, Medusa\u2019s face appears next to Anna Maria\u2019s, encouraging the viewer to associate the older sister\u2019s protective role over her younger sister with the talismanic protection traditionally attributed to Athena\u2019s aegis (fig. 2).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 2. Ferdinand Bol (1616\u20131680). Detail of Allegory of Education, Margarita Trip teaching her sister Anna Trip<\/em> (1663). Oil on canvas. 81.9 x 70.5 in. (208 x 179 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image provided by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through this iconography, Margarita mobilizes Athena\u2019s symbolic authority to affirm her responsibility for her sister\u2019s intellectual development. The painting echoes Visscher\u2019s poetic praise of Van Schurman by presenting Athena as a mediator of sisterly care, protection, and intellectual guidance. Together, these examples reveal a literary and visual tradition in which Netherlandish women recognized the deity\u2019s feminine iconography as a means of expressing solidarity across familial and amicable networks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anna Maria van Schurman herself also participated actively in this tradition. In 1648, she reiterated the praise that she had received from Anna Roemers Visscher in 1620 in a laudatory poem addressed to the French author and proto-feminist Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565\u20131645). Van Schurman had encountered Gournay through the theologian Andr\u00e9 Rivet, a mutual acquaintance.7<\/sup>\u00a0Congratulating Gournay on her ground-breaking treatise The Equality of Men and Women <\/em>(1622), Van Schurman devoted an epideictic poem to the French author in the \u201cPoemata\u201d chapter of her 1648 work Opuscula<\/em>. Originally published in Latin, the poem frames Gournay\u2019s achievements through the imagery of warfare and heroism, repeatedly invoking Athena:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026You bear the arms of Pallas, bold heroine in battles,<\/span>
\nAnd so that you may carry the laurels, you bear the arms of Pallas.<\/span>
\nThus it is fitting for you to make a defense for the innocent sex<\/span>
\nAnd to turn the weapons of harmful men against them\u20268<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

By likening Gournay\u2019s literary labor to a military campaign, Van Schurman endows her intellectual achievements with the rhetoric of victory and resistance. Gournay is praised as a \u201cheroine in battles\u201d whose weapons are arguments rather than swords. Moreover, in designating Gournay as \u201cPallas,\u201d Van Schurman invokes the epithet\u2019s reference to the deity\u2019s power to \u201ccreate cosmic upheaval\u201d by rapidly and violently shaking her shield or spear and thus reinforces the martial nature of Gournay\u2019s literary accomplishments.9<\/sup> Through Athena, Van Schurman reconfigures authorship as a form of combat waged in defense of women against patriarchal attacks. This rhetorical strategy not only elevates Gournay\u2019s accomplishments but also frames the collective struggle for women\u2019s intellectual recognition as a shared cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Schurman\u2019s laudatory poem addresses Gournay as a leader who advances the interests of women as a group. Van Schurman urges her to \u201clead on\u201d and positions herself and other women as followers rallying under Gournay\u2019s example. Such language demonstrates a keen awareness of how classical symbolism could be mobilized to articulate female solidarity and collective agency. Athena, a female deity who fuses wisdom and warfare, provided an ideal figure through whom women could imagine themselves as defenders, rather than transgressors, of femininity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The invocation of Athena also aligns with Gournay\u2019s own philosophical position. Gournay famously rejected the idea that women should strive to resemble men in order to achieve success, arguing instead that society\u2019s treatment of women as inferior resulted from unequal access to education rather than from the inherent \u201cflaws\u201d of their femininity.10<\/sup> She vehemently opposed the belief that femininity itself constituted an obstacle to women\u2019s achievements.11<\/sup> Van Schurman\u2019s praise of Gournay as a \u201cdefen[der] of the innocent sex\u201d suggests that she shared this conviction and perceived her own scholarly and artistic success as compatible with\u2014rather than opposed to\u2014her femininity. Her firm self-confidence even threatened her male contemporaries which led to extensive scrutiny and sexualization of her artistic production.12<\/sup>\u00a0These criticisms reveal how women who claimed equality without renouncing their gender posed a threat to the patriarchal hegemony of the early modern period. In this context, Athena offered a symbolic and visual framework through which women could defend their intellectual ambitions while affirming their feminine identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The repeated invocation of Athena by early modern women when expressing praise and admiration for one another thus constituted a strategic response to contemporary discourses that equated creativity, genius, and authority with masculinity, violence, and virility. As the patroness of both war and art, Athena disrupted these masculinist ideas and enabled women to articulate strength, intellect, and creativity as feminine qualities. Through Athena, women asserted that their achievements were not exceptions to the female sex but expressions of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 3. Cornelis van Dalen (1602\u2013<\/strong>1665). T\u2019Lof der Vrouwen<\/em> (1643). Engraving. 5 x 3.5 in. (128 x 89 mm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image provided by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This association between Athena and proto-feminist authors was extended beyond written works by Van Schurman and Gournay. The Amsterdam author Johanna Hobius (c. 1614\u20131642) appears with Athena on the frontispiece for her authored tract,\u00a0<\/span>T\u2019 Lof der Vrouwen<\/i>\u00a0(<\/span>In Praise of Women<\/i>) (fig. 3)<\/span>.13<\/sup>\u00a0The image portrays Hobius seated in her study, quill in hand, drafting the very text that the frontispiece introduces. Athena stands behind her, gazing over her shoulder and preparing to crown her with a laurel wreath. The composition visually aligns Hobius\u2019s authorship with divine wisdom and protection, reinforcing the legitimacy of her intellectual labor.<\/span><\/p>\n

As in Bol\u2019s Allegory of Education<\/em>, Athena appears here as a vigilant, sisterly supporter. The goddess\u2019s watchful presence evokes a relationship of care and endorsement, suggesting that Hobius\u2019s defense of women is sanctioned by a divine feminine authority. Hobius\u2019s text echoes Gournay\u2019s arguments, asserting that women\u2019s marginalization stems from male prejudice rather than \u201cinnate weakness.\u201d14<\/sup> Hobius explicitly endorses Anna Maria van Schurman as a model for Dutch women, calling upon them to adorn her with the laurel crown.15<\/sup>\u00a0This gesture mirrors Hobius\u2019s own symbolic coronation by Athena, reinforcing a reciprocal system of recognition among women authors and marking a victory for them. Generosity and praise circulated within this network of aspiring \u201cAthenae,\u201d strengthening bonds of mutual admiration and a collective feminine identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The praise first offered by Anna Roemers Visscher to the young Anna Maria van Schurman in 1620 set in motion a growing network of \u201cAthenae\u201d: women artists and proto-feminist authors who publicly celebrated one another\u2019s achievements as evidence of women\u2019s intellectual and creative capacities. Through literary and visual traditions, women contested misogynist beliefs that presented femininity as an obstacle to creativity, literary production, and originality. Instead, they identified patriarchal structures as the true barriers to women\u2019s education and recognition. By repeatedly invoking the image of Athena, early modern Netherlandish women forged a shared symbolic language through which they articulated solidarity and defended femininity as a worthy enabler of their success.<\/span><\/p>\n

This paper draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Annelies Verellen<\/strong> is a PhD candidate specializing in early modern Dutch and Flemish art at McGill University (Montr\u00e9al, Canada). Her research examines how Netherlandish women artists assert their creativity by theorizing and performing femininity. She is interested in the extent to which early modern women confronted the gendered language used in artistic theory, the conceptualization of \u2018genius,\u2019 and prescriptive moralizing literature when articulating their skill and status as women artists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

1. \u201cAls gij lijnwaet, met uw naeldt\/ Of papier, met kool bemaelt\/ Dat de konstenaers staen kijken\/ En’ bij Pallas u gelijken.\u201d Unless otherwise indicated, translations are the author\u2019s. The original Dutch poem is cited in Anna Roemers Visscher, Gedichten van Anna Roemers Visscher<\/em>, ed. Fr. Kossmann (‘s-Gravenhage, 1925), 28.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Anne R. Larsen and Steve Maiullo, Anna Maria van Schurman, Letters and Poems to and from Her Mentor and Other Members of Her Circle,<\/em> ed. Anne R. Larsen and Steve Maiullo (Iter Press, 2021), 69. The Roman equivalent name of Pallas Athena is \u2018Minerva.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

3. For more on the gendering of artistic pursuits and originality and requirements of male prowess, see Philip Sohm, \u201cGendered Style in Italian Art Criticism from Michelangelo to Malvasia,\u201d Renaissance Quarterly<\/em> 48, no. 4 (1995): 787, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/2863424. See also Elizabeth Rice Mattison, “The sculptor and the sculptress: Gendering sculpture production in the early modern Low Countries,” Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art \/ Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek Online<\/em> 74, no. 1 (2024): 76-105, doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004710740_004; Joanna Woods-Marsden, \u201cThe Female Self,\u201d in Renaissance Self-Portraiture: the Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist<\/em> (Yale University Press, 1998), 187-190.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Tatjana Van Run, \u201cNieuw Licht Op Het Trippenhuis: De Verhelderende Blik van de Dichter-Glazenmaker Salomon Oudart (1633-1699),\u201d Oud Holland<\/em> 132, no. 1 (2019): 20.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Margarita\u2019s martial costume may also hint at her family\u2019s dealings in the arms trade.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. In pagan mythology, Medusa was a faithful, chaste servant of the goddess Athena until she was sexually violated by Poseidon (Neptune) in the goddess\u2019s temple. To avenge the defilement of her temple, Athena punished Medusa by transforming her into a gorgon, a snake-haired monster whose gaze could turn men into stone. Perseus decapitated Medusa, whose severed head became a talismanic image of protection in the iconography of Athena. See Ovid, Metamorphoses<\/em>, trans. and ed. Stephanie McCarter (Penguin Books, 2022), 124-125.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, \u201cAnna Maria van Schurman and her Intellectual Circle,\u201d in Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle<\/em>, ed. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, trans. Joyce L. Irwin (University of Chicago Press, 1998), 13. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7208\/9780226850009.<\/span><\/p>\n

8. Anna Maria van Schurman, \u201cPoemata,\u201d in Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica et metrica<\/em> (1648), 264. Elsevier, 2014, accessed via Science Direct, October 29, 2025. https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/book\/9781493303977.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Susan Deacy, \u201c\u2018We Call Her Pallas, You Know\u2019: Naming, Taming and the Construction of Athena in Greek Culture and Thought,\u201d Pallas<\/em>, no. 100 (2016): 59\u201372, see esp. 70.<\/span><\/p>\n

10. Marie le Jars de Gournay, \u201cThe Equality of Men and Women,\u201d in The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century<\/em>, trans. Desmond M. Clarke, first edition (Oxford University Press, 2013), 54.<\/span><\/p>\n

11. Gournay, \u201cThe Equality of Men and Women,\u201d 60.<\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/span>2. Male contemporary and leading intellectual Constantijn Huygens repeatedly made fun of van Schurman\u2019s celibacy and independent choice to prioritize her education and artistic pursuits over marriage, for example. For more see Anne R. Larsen, \u201cAnna Maria van Schurman: Self-Portraiture, Female Scholarly Identity, and the Republic of Letters,\u201d Renaissance Quarterly<\/em> 77, no. 3 (2024): 879-922, and Agnes A. Sneller \u201cIf She Had Been a Man: Anna Maria van Schurman in the social and literary life of her age,\u201d in Choosing the Better Part: Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678)<\/em>, ed. Mirjam de Baar and Lynne Richards (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), 133-149.<\/span><\/p>\n

13. Johanna Hobius, Het Lof der Vrouwen<\/em> 1643, ed. Johan van Dam (Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren, 2009), accessed via DBNL.org on February 14, 2026, https:\/\/www.dbnl.org\/tekst\/hobi002lofd02_01\/hobi002lofd02_01_0001.php.<\/span><\/p>\n

14. Hobius, Het Lof der Vrouwen<\/em> 1643, A4R.<\/span><\/p>\n

15. Hobius, Het Lof der Vrouwen<\/em> 1643, A8R. \u201cComt Vrouwen al-te-mael en maegden wilt vercieren\/ Den Phoenix van ons Landt met groene Lauwerieren,\/ Comt hier en vlecht een krans op te stellen op het hooft.\u201d English translation: \u201cCome all women and maidens, who wish to adorn\/ the phoenix of our land with green laurels\/ come here and weave a crown to place upon her head.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Annelies Verellen In 1620, the prolific author, engraver, and printmaker Anna Roemers Visscher (1583\u20131651) dedicated a poem to thirteen-year-old Anna Maria van Schurman (1607\u20131678), who had attracted praise and attention for her formidable achievements in the arts. After extensively praising Van Schurman for her noble pursuit of learning as a young \u201cmaiden\u201d and applauding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25733,"featured_media":7814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7802"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7947,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7802\/revisions\/7947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}