Portrait of Maria Davila

"Portrait of Maria Davila" from 1864 depicts a subject connected to the Davila family, prominent in Romanian medicine and culture through the work of Carol Davila (1828–1884), the Franco-Romanian physician who founded Romania's modern medical institutions. Maria Davila would have moved in the enlightened reforming circles that Carol Davila inhabited—a world of cosmopolitan professionals committed to modernizing Romanian institutions on Western models. Aman's portrait of her belongs to the gallery of educated, reform-minded women whom he documented in the 1860s. Now at the Theodor Aman Museum, the painting records a face from a family that made a measurable difference to Romanian national life. Aman's technical facility with female portraiture is evident in how he manages fashionable dress and personal bearing simultaneously.

The 1864 date places the painting in the period of Aman's full technical maturity. His academic handling of female portraiture—careful attention to fabric, hair, and facial likeness within a composed spatial arrangement—is on clear display in works from this decade.