# Minerva [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CLODION]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Terracotta, height 48 cm ## Commentary Clodion spent nine years in Italy \(1762–71\), where he attended the French Academy in Rome and studied important collections of antiquities. Instructed by Charles-Joseph Natoire, director of the French Academy, to study sculpture by making clay copies instead of drawing, Clodion soon perfected a type of highly finished small terracotta sculpture popular with eighteenth-century collectors. Minerva combines the features of several ancient marbles, most importantly the Minerva Giustiniani in the Vatican. Clodion depicts the goddess of wisdom and the arts wearing a helmet, Greek chiton and mantle draped over her left shoulder and wrapped around her waist. Her raised right hand once held a spear \(now lost\). Her lowered left hand steadies a shield with quilted padding and arm straps on the inside; a delicately incised head of Medusa appears on the other side, probably added to the damp clay before finishing, along with Clodion's signature at the base. ## Related artworks - [Amor and Psyche]() - [Architecture]() - [Bacchante with Grapes Carried by Two Bacchantes and a Bacchant]() - [Bacchus and a Nymph with a Child and Grapes]() - [Egyptian Woman with Naos]() - [Montesquieu]() - [Montesquieu]() - [Mourner]() - [Music]() - [Nymph and Faun]() - [Pair of Bacchic Figures with a Child \(detail\)]() - [Pair of Bacchic Figures with a Child]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()