Anna Maria Torlonia, Duchess of Bracciano

School of Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), Pietro Tenerani? (1789-1869)
19th century, Marble

It's not clear whether the bust of Anna Maria, the wife of Giovanni Raimondo Torlonia, was made entirely by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen or whether it was made in the atelier of his most gifted pupil, Pietro Tenerani, whose puristic language and treatment of the marble (carved as if it were wax), lead one to believe. The woman is presented frontal, with her facial features marked and her gaze fixed (probably again for the resumption of the death mask, as in the case of the portrait of her husband). The woman wears an Empire-style dress draped across the chest and closed at the shoulders by buckles. Anna Maria Schultheiss (1760-1840) belonged to a family of colonial traders who had moved to Italy from her native Germany, she had married Giovanni Torlonia in 1793. After her husband's economic and social rise, of which she was an active architect, she held salons in Rome and held the title of duchess of Bracciano.