Aurelia

Dated 1906 and held at the National Gallery in London, 'Aurelia' represents Mancini's mature approach to the named female portrait — a genre he explored increasingly in the later phases of his career alongside his earlier concentration on male street children and circus performers. A named female subject occupies a middle territory between the formal commissioned portrait and the genre figure: she is specific enough to have been given a name, but the name itself — Aurelia, suggesting gold, light, and antiquity — carries a poetic rather than purely documentary function. By 1906 Mancini had developed the layered, atmospheric technique of his maturity, and his female portraits of this period are characterised by a quality of luminous but complex surface that distinguishes them from the more direct handling of his early work. The National Gallery's acquisition reflects the British appreciation of his work that Sargent's advocacy had cultivated.

Mancini's handling of female subjects in his mature period shows a different register from his treatments of male figures. He was attentive to the quality of fabric — silk, velvet, muslin — and the specific way feminine dress distributed light across its varied surfaces. 'Aurelia' would be built through his characteristic layered approach: warm ground, blocked value structure, careful glazing of the face, and more experimental treatment of the costume and background. The name's golden associations may have influenced his palette choices toward warmer, more luminous tones.