Name of Object:

A Greek lady of Smyrna

Location:

Athens, Greece

Holding Institution:

Benaki Museum

 About Benaki Museum, Athens

Date of Object:

1768

Author:

Francis Smith

Inventory Number:

11189

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Oil painting

Description:

The picture probably depicts a bride before being bedecked. Her outfit-one of the two customary types of urban bridal costume during the Ottoman period- consists of one or two pairs of pantaloons, a diaphanous selvedged chemise and a dress with tightly buttoned long sleeves and a sash worn low on the hips. Her overcoat is trimmed with fur, has wide pointed sleeves and the dress appears to have been hitched up, revealing the bottom of the pantaloons. Among the various testimonies bequeathed to us by the foreign artist-travelers who visited Greece in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the depictions of costumes are particularly important. The imaginative combination of the various garments and accessories that make up the Greek costume and the wealth of jewellery fascinated foreign travellers, who recorded them pictorially, often with a dubitable degree of accuracy.

[sh_db_typeof_object]

Painting

Citation of this web page:

Delivorrias, Fotopoulos 1997, 503, fig. 888 (Elisabeth Karanopoulou) "A Greek lady of Smyrna" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2025.
https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;AWE;gr;25;en

Prepared by: Delivorrias, Fotopoulos 1997, 503, fig. 888 (Elisabeth Karanopoulou)

MWNF Working Number: GR 025