This portrait of Louis Pasteur, by Albert Edelfelt, is a classic depiction of the pure scientist; the painting was emulated in print as well, and it adorns the cover of the first critical biography of the great chemist.

The painting depicts the scientist standing among his laboratory equipment, with a thoughtful face, and its theme indicates a contemporary subject, even if the light falling from the right is reminiscent of chiaroscuro.

In the 1880s, bacteriology was becoming a coherent discipline, especially through methods for growing pure cultures on agar gels containing specific nutrients in Petri dishes.

The long-held idea that living organisms could easily originate from nonliving matter called spontaneous generation was attacked in a series of experiments carried out by Pasteur.

[7] In the portrait, Pasteur is shown holding a glass bottle containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies.