Alfredo Bellandi’s monograph states that these Imperial profiles appear in Gregorio di Lorenzo’s oeuvre between the 1460s and the end of the 1480s. Among the profile reliefs by Gregorio, those of Emperors far outnumber those of Empresses. However, two profiles of Faustina, both in pietra serena and housed in Paris – one in the Louvre, the other in the Musée Jacquemart-André – are not unrelated to the work studied here. In particular, the Jacquemart-André relief is quite similar. The slightly pronounced nose, powerfully highbrow, and the way that tresses are freed from the head of hair, are all features shared by these reliefs. On the other hand, the more supple treatment of modelling in the face, the use of marble, and the richness of decoration in the dress clearly distinguish the relief formerly in the Manzi collection from the two pietra serena profiles.

In spite of a notable difference in scale, a number of elements enable us to find parallels between the present relief and those in the 1472 series of Caesars from Ferrara, especially the Hadrian in the Louvre: broad, rounded necks, painstaking modelling of eyebrows, eyes and eyelids, narrow and finely-contoured mouths, the description of ears, with a very prominent tragus, and the treatment of the relatively dense locks of hair.

In addition, the way that the dress is described, with a floral brocade detaching itself from an embossed ground, its matte effect recalling velvet, recurs in the Virgin and Child from the Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia, dated to 1460-1465. Likewise, the treatment of the fabric belting the Virgin’s robe on this relief closely resembles the fine ribbon with the fermaglio in our sculpture. These various comparisons allow us to date the creation of this profile of an Empress to a relatively early period of Gregorio’s career, perhaps in the years between 1465 and 1475.