Donor
Gender information of the object:
Color:
Type:
Primary Material:
3D object:
Source:
Church of the Transfiguration, Kato Mylos, Limassol district. Photograph by Xenophon Michael.
Code:
393
Translator:
Euphrosyne Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou
Description:
Donor wearing blue baggy trousers in an icon of 1852. The icon depicts the Transfiguration on the upper part, and Saint John Prodromos with the kneeling donor on the lower part. Church of the Transfiguration, Kato Mylos, Limassol district.
The Christian Orthodox donor wears blue wide trousers (vraka) in combination with a striped shirt and over it a red waistcoat and a dark blue jacket.
Bibliography:
Photograph by Xenophon Michael, Department of Antiquities
References/Remarks:
Christian Orthodox donors are often represented in church icons or other paintings dating from the very end of the 18th cen¬tury but mostly from the first decades of the 19th century to the end of the period of Otto¬man rule (for representative examples see Hadjichristodoulou 2008, A/A 73, fig. 132; A/A 84, figs 147-48; A/A 85, fig. 149; A/A 88, fig. 156-57; A/A 91, fig. 162. These examples range from 1796 to 1871). The type of dress is similar to that of the Turks in Mayer’s paintings except for the white turban (e.g. Engraving presenting Ottoman Turks with guns, entitled ‘A colossal vase near Limisso in Cyprus’ (Mayer 1803). Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation E. 23.). Blue vrakiá or salvária are recorded among the belongings of deceased Christians in Church Registers (Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 1996, 80). The blue vráka has also been part of the costume typical of Greek islands and coasts in the Mediterranean (see for example Gezerlis and Gezerlis (eds) 1989, 22-23).