Cuban singer-guitarist Ana María Loreto Martínez: 1 copy worldwide.

[Ana María Loreto Martínez] / [Cuba] / [Music]. Maria Martinez Hofsängerin der Königin von Spanien. S.l.: s.n., s.a. [c. 1850] .[27.8 x 20.8 cm], [1] f. steel engraving. Some wrinkling, stain in upper margin, remnants of mounting on verso.
 
 
Very rare (1 copy worldwide: Victoria & Albert Museum) separately issued German steel-engraving portrait of Ana María Loreto Martínez (b. 1820), a Cuban guitarist and singer who performed to much acclaim in London (especially at Her Majesty’s Theatre), Paris, and Madrid during the 1850s and 1860s. 
 
She is generally identified as being the woman famously photographed by Nadar (1820-1910) during the late 1850s under the soubriquet “Maria L’Antillaise.” Martínez was a correspondent of Théophile Gautier (1811-72) and was mentioned by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67). 
 
In this German print—a rare contemporary depiction of Martínez—she is referred to as the “Court Singer to the Queen of Spain.” The young Queen Isabella II (1830-1904) granted Martínez a pension in 1848, which was revoked in 1850, and so the engraving likely dates from those years. A visual contrast is made between the smiling Martínez depicted performing and the Queen, shown in her regalia in half-length, in an oval frame behind the singer.
 
Martínez taught guitar in Seville before studying at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. She was often called “the Black Malibran” of “La Malibran noire” in reference to the famous Spanish singer Maria Felicia Malibran (1808-36).
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate only the example at the Victoria & Albert Museum (inv. S.1619-2013).
 
*Marie Ndiaye, Un pas de chat sauvage; Katalog der Portrait-Sammlung der k.u.k. General-Intendanz der k.k. Hoftheater zugleich ein biographisches Hilfsbuch auf dem Gebiet von Theater und Musik, p. 197; Benjamin Lumley, Reminiscences of the Opera, pp. 286-87.