Portrait of a woman, possibly a self portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) by http://www.wikidata.org/.well-known/genid/46ed845a71a7c9f8ef78d6d35b100e2f

This small oval portrait on copper is thought to depict Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678), the most celebrated female scholar of the Dutch Golden Age, and it may be a self-portrait. She was the first woman permitted to attend a Dutch university, though she had to sit behind a curtain so male students would not be distracted by her presence.

Look at the plain white cap and the dark collar: this is not aristocratic display. The restraint is the point. She wanted to be seen as a thinker. Her gaze is direct, unapologetic, and the soft sfumato modeling around the eyes and lips gives her face a quiet liveliness that still reads almost four centuries later.

Van Schurman corresponded with the leading minds of Europe and mastered fourteen languages, writing poetry in five of them. The curtain at Utrecht was humiliating, but she went anyway, because the knowledge was worth it. Painted on copper, a rare, luminous, durable surface, this portrait was built to outlast the prejudice that surrounded it.

She made sure her eyes would find yours. And 380 years later, they still do.