Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini died in Milan on January 19, 1795, closing out a life spent as a pioneering composer, harpsichordist, and librettist.
Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini died in Milan on January 19, 1795, at the age of 74. She passed away having lived through an extraordinary period of European musical and intellectual transformation, from the late Baroque through the Classical era, and having witnessed the changing status of women in the arts and sciences across the 18th century.
By the time of her death, Agnesi had built a substantial body of work including operas, cantatas, and keyboard compositions, and had been recognized during her lifetime as one of the first women to compose opera — a genre almost entirely dominated by men. Her scores, some of which survive in libraries and archives today, are studied by musicologists and historians researching the role of women composers in the Enlightenment period.
Her death came at a time of significant upheaval in Milan and the broader Italian peninsula, on the eve of the Napoleonic wars that would reshape the political map of Europe. While she did not achieve the lasting historical fame of her sister Maria Gaetana Agnesi, modern musicological rediscovery efforts — including archival research, dedicated composer databases, and revival performances — have worked to restore Maria Teresa Agnesi's place in the historical record as a significant and pioneering female composer of her era.