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Michiel van Mierevelt (1567-1641)
Anna Maria van Schuurman (1607-1678). Panel, 63 × 52 cm.

Franeker, Museum 't Coopmanshûs, inv.nr. Sch. 52

Anna Maria van Schuurman was the exception that proves the rule that women played no role in the Dutch world of learning. Her linguistic gifts (she commanded a scholar's knowledge of the modern languages as well as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic) and her correspondence with scholars all over Europe earned her fame and respect. She was also a painter, engraver and embroiderer of exceptional talent; in 1641 she was admitted to the Utrecht guild of St. Luke.

From 1623 to 1632 Anna Maria lived in Franeker, where she made the acquaintance of Rene Descartes, and came under the influence of his humanistic philosophy. Eventually, however, she moved back to Utrecht and to the camp of her old and constant protector Gisbertus Voetius, the firebreathing Calvinist, who arranged for her to be able to follow lectures at the university when it opened in 1636. An academic position was however out of the question, and Anna Maria had to do without the durability of an official appointment.

When her mother died in 1647, she became responsible for two aged aunts, a task which took her away from the university. She began practicing a more personal form of worship than ecclesiastical Calvinism, and in the 1660s became a devoted follower of the Swiss pietist Jean de Labadie. When he moved to Holland in 1666, she joined her lot with his, even taking the daring step of living in his house in Amsterdam. The group around Labadie was chased from pillar to post in Holland, Germany and Denmark. After the death of the founder, Anna Maria became coleader of the independent sect of Labadists, in the Frisian town of Wiewerd.

G.D.J. Schotel, Anna Maria van Schuurman, 's-Hertogenbosch 1853. NNBW, vol. 1, cols. 1465-1466; information from the musuem