# Minerva in a Chariot

- By: Abbott Handerson Thayer (born Boston, MA 1849-died Dublin, NH 1921)
- Date: ca. 1894
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 38 1/8 x 53 3/4 in. (96.7 x 136.4 cm)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=23938)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/3c4c9b76624e7950ab7e576ea25c8e5f.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In 1894, Abbott Thayer won a commission to create a large mosaic panel of the goddess Minerva for the Library of Congress, and he painted this oil sketch before executing the final version in glass. He was to receive $4000 for the completed project, but engineers and architects at the library quickly grew frustrated with Thayer’s unwillingness to comply with their instructions. After years of argument, the commission was given to another prominent muralist, Elihu Vedder. His Minerva now presides over the landing of what was once the library’s main staircase. (Cartwright, “Reading Rooms: Interpreting the American Public Library Mural, 1890-1930,” PhD diss., Univ. Michigan, 1994)