The Pushkin Museum houses a fragmentary marble 'Female bust', which still bears the attribution to Antonio Federighi proposed for it by Wilhelm Bode when the work was in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (where it remained until the dramatic events of 1945). On the grounds of stylistic similarities, the present study proposes assigning the work instead to Paolo Romano, an attribution that would allow the bust to be associated with a payment made to the sculptor on behalf of Pius II in 1461. This is the first step in reconstructing the history of the piece, which was sent by the Pope to Pienza and remained in the Sienese collections of the Piccolomini family probably until 1889, when it was sold by them to Stefano Bardini. John II of Liechtenstein then bought it from the antiquarian with the specific intention of paying homage to Wilhelm Bode by donating it to the Berlin museums. In the work, the outcome of a fusion between the two newborn genres of portrait busts and reliefs representing “all'antica” profile portraits can also be recognized: an idea that Paolo Romano developed starting from a head of 'Faustina Minor', a model he was so faithful to that he made it perfectly obvious, thus showing an exceptionally precocious antiquarian attitude.