Object of the month – December
Object Of The Month
1st December 2025
Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A., Portrait of a Lady or La Nanna
The 3rd of December marks the 195th birthday of the painter and sculptor Frederic, Lord Leighton. Born in 1830, Lord Leighton rose to become a titan of nineteenth-century British art, commanding huge sums for his work and experiencing immense popularity before his death in 1896. To celebrate, our December object of the month is his Portrait of a Lady or La Nanna, on display during the open season in Bowood’s Victorian Room.
Meet the object
This portrait transports us to the late 1850s, when Frederic Leighton was in his late twenties and working in Rome.
Here, he shows a woman’s face in profile, looking down in a dignified manner against a pale gold background. Her striking dark hair contrasts with the pearl headband she is wearing, the vibrant coral or garnet necklace around her neck, and her white gown. She was the Roman model Anna Maria Risi, whom he painted several times in this period. Though a small portrait, she is beautiful and commanding, showing Leighton’s talent in abundance right from the beginning of his career.
Lord Leighton the artist
Leighton’s childhood and career was one marked by travel and exposure to the work of great artists from an early age. Lord Leighton was born into a wealthy family in Scarborough who had made their money through the medical profession, working as doctors for prominent individuals. When his mother’s health began to deteriorate, Leighton moved with his family to continental Europe at the age of eleven. He became fluent in four languages as they travelled through Germany, Switzerland and Italy. By virtue of this, he was able to visit some of the finest art collections in Europe as a young man and formally trained as an artist in Frankfurt, Germany, where his teachers imparted a love of medieval and early Italian painting.
His talent received relatively early recognition: in 1855, Queen Victoria bought a painting from him, Cimabue’s Madonna Carried in Procession (1853-1855, Royal Collection Trust). His star power would continue to grow and grow. Less than a decade later, in 1864, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, before he became President in 1878.
Leighton in Rome
Leighton was an enthusiastic traveller, helped in part by those early years experiencing vast parts of Europe with his family. As he approached thirty years old, Leighton spent an extended amount of time living in Rome. It was here, from late 1858 to the early summer of 1859, that he painted Anna Maria Risi, who was known as La Nanna.
Risi was from Trastevere, a historically working-class neighbourhood on the left bank of the Tiber, just south of the Vatican City. Risi posed for various artists, making her long dark hair and distinctive arched eyebrows easily recognisable. Her portrayals by Leighton and the German artist Anselm Feuerbach were perhaps the most famous renderings of her. Leighton’s painting Nanna (Pavonia) (1859, Royal Collection Trust) showed Risi with peacock feathers and was bought by the Prince of Wales.
This painting was purchased for the collection at Bowood in 1860.
Leighton’s later career
In his capacity of President of the Royal Academy, and as a key figure amongst his contemporaries, Leighton was an ardent supporter of causes relating to art and culture in Victorian Britain. His home at 12 Holland Park Road, London was purpose built as a joint house and studio as befitting an important artist. It became an important display of his artistic process, items collected from his extensive travels and works by his contemporaries, and he held visiting hours.
Just before he died, his work and reputation as an artist was honoured by being given the title Frederic, Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton – the only artist to have ever been raised to the peerage. He passed away in 1896 and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Image: Sir Frederick Leighton, Photography Studio of John and Charles Watkins, 1860s. Open access image, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970.659.506.