Minerva in Marquetry satinwood

I watched one of the episodes of the recent BBC series Carved With Love, on Thomas Chippendale, hoping to find about the neoclassical aspects to his work that came out of his collaborations with Robert Adam and so add some depth to my appreciation of the Roehampton Adam Room and chimneypiece (see previous posting). Around half way through the episode I discovered that a piece of furniture regarded as one of Chippendale's greatest achievements includes a representation of the goddess on whom much of my research has centred, and continues to centre: Athena/Minerva. 

The item in question, pictured at the start of this posting, is the 'Diana and Minerva commode' which is the showpiece item in the State Bedroom at Harewood House.  One of the programme's talking heads described the piece as 'astonishing' by virtue of its 'design and quality'. I'd like to focus upon a third aspect, its representation of the goddesses on the two roundels.  I want to consider why these two particular goddesses were picked, and - in view of my past and current work on one of the deities - why Minerva in particular.  Is it enough, as the documentary noted, that Minerva was the goddess of craft? If so, why is she being juxtaposed with Diana, a goddess of wild spaces?  What messages are being constructed via inclusion of these figures about classical culture in a Georgian neoclassical grand house if not would-be palace? The piece was intended as parade rather than functional furniture and helped put the wealth and status of Harewood on show.  Nothing seems to be done to chance.  This expensive piece, using various exotic woods, has been executed following some thought - as the documentary discussed, it is like a work of architecture in miniature replete with frieze.  Ebony and ivory are used to inlay the roundels. Would any two mythological figures have done the job equally well?

Answers to follow!