The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Rosie the Riveter, Norman Rockwell, 1943
Rockwell made this painting of the new American working woman, a sort of Pallas Athena in overalls, as a cover of The Saturday Evening Post, a popular weekly magazine in mid-century America. With so many men serving in uniform during World War II, women entered jobs that were customarily closed to them. Rockwell modeled Rosie after Michelangelo's figure of the Prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As an additional contribution to the war effort, she rests her foot on a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

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