Minerva (Fra Bartolomeo)

Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, and crafts, often identified with the Greek goddess Athena. In art, she is typically depicted with attributes such as an owl (symbolizing wisdom), a helmet, a shield, and a spear.

Fra Bartolomeo (1472/75-1517), born Bartolomeo di Paolo del Fattorino, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. While he is known for his devotional paintings, altarpieces, and portraits of religious figures like Saint Mark and Saint Sebastian, specific documentation confirming a surviving Fra Bartolomeo painting definitively titled "Minerva" or clearly representing the goddess Minerva is currently lacking.

Art historians and museum catalogs often attribute paintings with similar themes or subject matter to an artist when direct documentary evidence is absent. It is possible, therefore, that a work depicting a female figure possessing the iconographic traits of Minerva could be attributed to Fra Bartolomeo based on stylistic analysis or circumstantial evidence. However, without definitive proof or a well-established and recognized work identified as such by art historical scholarship, the existence of a Fra Bartolomeo painting titled "Minerva" remains unconfirmed. Further research into period documentation, exhibition records, and auction house catalogs would be necessary to definitively confirm such an attribution.