Portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678)

Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) was one of the most remarkable women of the Dutch Golden Age — a polymath who read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and several modern languages, wrote poetry in multiple tongues, studied music, calligraphy, and engraving, and in 1636 became the first woman to attend lectures at the University of Utrecht (though seated behind a screen). Her 1637 portrait by Mierevelt, when she was thirty, places her at the height of her European fame as a prodigy: she had been corresponding with Descartes, Grotius, and the leading intellectuals of the continent for years. Museum Martena in Franeker — in Friesland, where Schurman had family connections — holds this portrait as a record of one of the Republic's most celebrated intellects. Later in life Schurman abandoned scholarly life to follow the pietist Labadist movement, but in 1637 she was still the Republic's most celebrated female scholar.

Mierevelt renders the thirty-year-old Schurman with his characteristic mature technique, but the sitter presents an unusual case: her fame rested on intellectual achievement rather than civic rank or military distinction. The portrait must communicate learning and refinement rather than status alone. Any books, writing instruments, or musical attributes in the composition would signal her scholarly identity in the conventional language of Baroque learned portraiture.