THREE STANDING PORTRAITS OF VILLAGERS IN TRADITIONAL COSTUMES
Possibly Ottoman Greece or the Balkans, Italian School, first quarter 19th century, signed Mazzoli

Opaque pigments, ink, and pencil on paper, comprising three standing portraits, each in vertical format, depicting two female villagers and a male soldier with different landscape scenes as backdrops, one of the maidens wearing an elaborate embroidered polychrome apron over a cobalt blue long skirt, a white linen headcover with stylised red motifs around the edges, and a golden medallion with a stylised cross on her chest, reminiscent of 19th-century Wallachian and Bulgarian costumes, the lined paper watermarked with a Strasbourg fleur-de-lys crown surmounting a 'Post Horn' shield and the initials 'GM'; the latter clad in a costume reminiscent of Aegean or Cycladic Greek islands fashion, dated on the reverse 18th July 1811 in pencil; and lastly, the male soldier dressed in typical Yugoslavian attire, most probably depicting an Albanian foot soldier from Shkoder, with a long yataghan sword and a Turkish flintlock pistol tucked in the belt around his waist, holding a Turkish chibouk tobacco pipe in his right hand and a tall Ottoman miquelet rifle in his left hand, the lined paper watermark undeciphered, each watercolour signed on the lower corners Mazzoli Disegno, each approx. 31.5cm x 25.5cm.

It is rather intriguing to notice that although the pictorial style, chromatic palette, and subject selection of these three watercolours are very similar and could therefore be attributed to the same hand, each paper is different. Indeed, the paper of the Greek maiden appears to be woven, instead of lined, and the papers of the Wallachian maiden and Albanian soldier are lined but present two different watermarks, respectively a crowned 'Post Horn' shield and another undeciphered. The emblem of a posthorn upon a shield became a common paper watermark in the 17th century and was associated with smaller and lighter types of paper (such as might be used for a letter) rather than the heavyweight specimens required for music manuscripts. The fact the Italian painter Mazzoli chose to use what was available, instead of sourcing a specific type of paper, suggests that these watercolours were probably produced 'on-site' as part of an itinerant travelogue compiled on the road by the artist.