Anna Maria van Schurman

Despite women being unwelcome there, Van Schurman’s neighbour Gisbertus Voetius, a professor at the University of Utrecht, made an exception for her. It is said that she followed lectures from behind a curtain, out of sight of her male fellow students. Several years later she wrote a discourse on ‘The suitability of the female mind for science and literature’. Aside from her interest in science, Van Schurman was an artist who practised paper cutting, poetry, drawing, embroidery and painting. She also learned to engrave from the printmaker Magdalena van de Passe. In intellectual circles in the Netherlands and abroad, Van Schurman was regarded as one of the most learned women in Europe.