If the other major themes on which the painter directed his attention have been studied and highlighted to the public over time - the professorship at the School of Belle-Arte, his ecclesiastical and historical painting - we notice that, although it occupies a significant weight of his legacy , the discreet female portrait - from the copies of the great masters studied in Rome (1845 - 1851) or of the ladies in his entourage - remained unfairly limited to the primary function of studies, respectively of photographic immortalization.