ABSTRACT
Discussing his 'Sphinx design' for a projected oil painting, a highly finished drawing called The Question, Dante Gabriel Rossetti identified its central idea: 'Man questioning the Unknown'. The term savant was used in English by the early eighteenth century to identify a man of learning or science, especially one professionally engaged in research. Learned ladies and female savants were necessarily deemed anomalous in a period when the dominant educational theory insisted that studying mathematics, science, Greek and Latin was physically and morally risky for females. Yet Pre-Raphaelite canvases repeatedly depict women learned in the abstruse sciences as embarrassingly healthy - women with books and vital flesh, kinetically charged hair and sexual allure. Represented with iconic tomes of obscure learning, cauldrons and potions, prophetic mirrors, globes, or magician's wands, these figures are conspicuously erotic, their sexual appeal and threat graphically displayed in their abundant, loose hair, transparent or clinging garments, or accentuated erogenous zones.
