Portrait of Jenny Lind

The Swedish-born Jenny Lind (1820–1887) was popularly known as the "Swedish Nightingale" to a generation of listeners who came to know her pure soprano voice either on the European opera stage or on her American tour sponsored by P.T. Barnum. In this portrait of her, the antique Roman references—the triglyph earring, the classically inspired hair ribbon, and the "Roma" inscription on the six-pointed necklace—may have more to do with the sculptor, Margaret Foley, than with her sitter. Foley was one of a group of expatriate women sculptors based in Rome, where antique statuary and its raw material (white marble) were both close at hand. Foley had begun her sculptural career with small figurines and miniature cameos, gradually expanding the scale of her work to life size, as here. The profile portrait in a tondo format—an allusion to Imperial Roman portrait medallions—ennobles the subject, whom Foley probably never met. (She most likely worked from a photograph.) Celebrated figures who sat for Foley include the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner.