Portrait of a lady
Gender information of the object:
Color:
Type:
Primary Material:
Source:
Department of Antiquities
Code:
49
Translator:
Euphrosyne Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou
Description:
The portrait of a lady is painted on the wooden case of a grandfather clock. She wears a fine-spun white shirt trimmed with lace at the edges, over the shirt she wears an anteri (open gown) made of a fabric with floral patterns. It has a big round opening on the chest is closed with a series of buttons down to the waist. At the waist it is secured by an embroidered belt with round buckles. On top of the anteri she wears a tzouppe (long robe) lined with spotted ermine fur. The fabric show delicate reddish flowers on a background in shades of green. A high, headdress swathed in flower-patterned scarves, as well as jewellery (earnings, pearl and other necklaces, bracelets), complete the attire. Part of the hair is projecting from the headdress along the temples. A red flower is attached to the scarf decorating the right part of her face. Her eyes are outlined with holla (kohl), and the lips are painted red.
Bibliography:
Bibliography Rizopoulou - Egoumenidou, E., 1996, Urban dress of Cyprus during the 18th and 19th centuries, Nicosia. Rizopoulou - Egoumenidou, E., 1991, The House of the dragoman, Nicosia. Rizopoulou - Egoumenidou, E. and Damdelen, A., 2012, Aziz Damdelen, Turkish Cypriot dress The Aziz Damdelen Collection, Nicosia. Herdt, A., 1992, Dessins De Liotard: Suivi Du Catalogue De L'oeuvre Dessine, Musee Du Louvre;Geneva (Switzerland);Liotard, Jean Etienne, Reunion Des Musees Nationaux. Μπάδα- Τσομώκου, Κ., 1983, Η αθηναϊκή γυναικεία φορεσιά κατά την περίοδο 1687-1834. Ενδυματολογική μελέτη, διδακτ. διατρ., Ιωάννινα 1983.
References/Remarks:
1. The clock was made by the famous British clock-maker Isaac Rogers (1754-1839), while the case is of local manufacture. A bronze plaque above the manufacturer’s name, shows that the clock was once the property of Michael de Vezin, the English Consul to Aleppo and Cyprus. The date of his death (1792) is the terminus ante quem for the making of the grandfather clock with the lady’s portrait.
2. Comparisons with female representations of the same period show that ladies in Constantinople, Smyrna, Athens, Ioannina etc., followed the alla turca (Turkish style) fashion, which with local variations and a variety of headdresses, prevailed from Moldovla¬chia to the archipelago (see many comparative examples in the 18th-century drawings by Jean-Etienne Liotard in Herdt 1992, passim; for similar garments in Athenian attire see Bada-Tsomokou 1983). It has been widely documented that espe¬cially in the provinces under direct rule – as was the case in Cyprus – the native urban elite had adopted and adapted Ottoman Turkish styles in varying degrees. The luxurious garments of the aristocracy in the two Romanian principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, were also based on the fashion of the Ottoman world (see examples in Scarce 1987, 100-104).