Signora Gomez d'Arza

Thomas Eakins

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although Signora Gomez d’Arza did not belong to Eakins’s immediate circle, she inspired one of his most eloquent portraits. An actress of Italian ancestry, she was married to Enrico Gomez d’Arza, the impresario of a small theater that Eakins and his wife visited in the Italian quarter of Philadelphia. Susan Eakins recalled in 1927: “They were very poor, depending on their acting and Signora’s teaching young actors, for a living. They could not speak English. Mr. Eakins spoke Italian and learned from her that she had had tragic experiences in her early life. She was about thirty years old when the portrait was painted.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art