An Italian Marble Figure of Minerva JAMES HENRY HASELTINE (AMERICAN, 1833-1907) depicted wearing a phrygian cap with an eagle at the top and a laurel crown at the brim, standing in contrapposto with one hand holding a laurel wreath and the other hand preparing to draw her sword, her hair in a long braid draped across her breast and her right shoulder, standing barefoot on an armor breast plate and a circular base signed J. H. Haseltine, Rome, 1869. Height 50 1/2 inches.

James Henry Haseltine, brother of the painter William Stanley Haseltine and uncle of the sculptor Herbert Haseltine, was a Philadelphia native who studied with French-born sculptor Joseph Bailly. Haseltine briefly toured France and Italy before serving two years in the American Civil War, then returned to Rome where he established a studio and lived the rest of his life. His sculptures of classical figures such as Minerva, Columbia and others honored American lives lost in the Civil War. The Union League of Philadelphia commissioned a monumental sculpture which Haseltine completed around 1865; it still stands at the club today.