When the first mechanics’ institutes were founded in London and Philadelphia in 1824, Baltimore was not far behind. Two years later, the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (now the Maryland Institute College of Art or MICA) opened its doors as part of an international movement sparked by the Industrial Revolution to “provide instruction...in the principles of science... [and raise] artisans to their proper place in a democratic society.” Among the Institute’s early students was former stonecutter’s assistant William Henry Rinehart, who went on to an international career as a neoclassical sculptor, moving permanently to Rome in 1858. Rinehart favored classical subjects such as Atalanta, the fleetfooted virgin huntress of Greek mythology. His composition echoes the Barberini Atalanta, a Greco-Roman figure that once stood in the Barberini Palace in Rome and is now in the Vatican. According to Rinehart’s account books, this piece was executed in marble in 1874, the year of Rinehart’s death. Workmen in his shop later inscribed and dated it 1875. The marble pedestal is original to the sculpture.