Antonietta Raphaël was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana movement together with her husband Mario Mafai. She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially after World War II, dominated her output. They highlighted the tender and vibrant carnality present in stone, with works such as Miriam dormiente and Nemesis.

Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th-century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.