Italian School, "circassian Woman" (attr. To Pietro Morgari, Turin, 1852 – London, 1885)

Italian School, "Circassian Woman", 2nd half of the 19th century
Oil on canvas, cm. 131 x 97.5

Attributed to Pietro Morgari (Turin, 1852 – London, 1885) by
Dr. Cav. Arabella Cifani, Art Historian, Art Expert of the Court of Turin, Registered in the Register of Experts and Appraisers of the Chamber of Commerce of Turin

The protagonist of the painting is a young woman in oriental clothing, captured in a meditative act, while with her right hand she plays with a column of turquoise. A beautiful light effect sculpts her figure from the left. The woman wears a characteristic embroidered skullcap with a central pin, typical of Circassian women. Her clothing is completed by a large white shirt and a blue cloak embroidered with golden stars. In the background, oriental-style arabesques and inscriptions (not real) in Kufic characters. Exterminated by the Tsarist army of Alexander II, the surviving Circassians migrated to Turkey around 1864; skilled warriors were hired by the sultan, but Circassian culture and traditions also emigrated to Arab and Eastern countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Turkish sultans had always believed that Circassian women were among the most beautiful in the world and many of them were kidnapped and lived as slaves in the harem; their legend became a sort of symbol in Western Orientalism, especially in the field of painting. Both in Europe and America, Circassians were thus identified as the ideal of female beauty in poetry and art. The women's clothing, the subject of study here, finds precise confirmation in period prints. The painting fits perfectly into that vein of orientalist painting, which spread throughout the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. It was a genre of great popularity whose last followers operated until the 1920s. Recurring themes of Orientalist painting were bazaars, alleys, deserts, mosques, landscapes with ancient ruins, the Nile, the Holy Land, the harem, the Turkish bath, slaves and odalisques. Many European ladies posed for this kind of paintings, transforming themselves, almost for fun, into orientals.
Of great artistic interest, the work is attributable to the rare and precious painter from Turin Pietro Morgari. Unfortunately, Morgari is still little known to critics, despite having been a very modern artist, with a truly European style and cultural openness.