{
"data": {
"id": 540588,
"accession_number": "2023.47",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Two Veiled Young Women, probably Lilla Amnani and Her Sister, 1786. Richard Cosway (British, 1742\u20131821). Graphite, watercolor, red chalk on paper; matted: 38.1 x 29.7 cm (15 x 11 11/16 in.); sheet: 33 x 25.7 cm (13 x 10 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2023.47",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Two Veiled Young Women, probably Lilla Amnani and Her Sister",
"creation_date": "1786",
"creation_date_earliest": 1786,
"creation_date_latest": 1786,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England"
],
"technique": "graphite, watercolor, red chalk on paper",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - British",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Matted: 38.1 x 29.7 cm (15 x 11 11/16 in.); Sheet: 33 x 25.7 cm (13 x 10 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.33,
"height_inch": 13,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.257,
"width_inch": 10,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.381,
"height_inch": 15,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.297,
"width_inch": 11,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.6875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Richard Cosway (the artist) [1742\u20131821]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760-1838), Lodi",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Gifted by the above as part of a large collection to the College Collegio delle Dame Inglesi, Lodi",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Sisters of Charity of Maria Santissima Bambina, Lodi",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1948",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Acquired from the above by Commander Gerald F. Barnett (1926-2011), Hampshire",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Anthony Landsberg, London, England",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2015",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "David S. Lavender Antiques (sold as Abraham Pascalrid and his two wives)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Private collection, UK, until 2019",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2015\u201319",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "(Philip Mould & Company, London, England), sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?\u20132023",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "June 5, 2023\u2013",
"sortorder": 10
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The unspecific attire of these two ladies, with vaguely Ottoman robes and vaguely Greek headdresses, has led scholars to believe that the artist contrived the ensembles from a costume book rather than from specific people.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Richard Cosway was a prolific painter in London, most well-known for his portrait miniatures and drawings, which he made both on commission and as personal exercises or mementos. This drawing features two women who may be fantasized versions of the two wives of Sidi Hadji Abdurrahman Adja, a Tripolitan ambassador who visited London in 1786. A published account of the ambassador\u2019s home life circulated around this time. Cosway may have invented the ladies as a form of novelistic intrigue when he made a drawing featuring the ambassador.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q120401475"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2023.47-two-veiled-young-wom"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Ferrari, Emma, \u201cI Disegni di Riccardo Cosway nella Biblioteca di Lodi,\u201d Rassegna d\u2019Arte XIII (1913)",
"page_number": "144-147, p. 145",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2023.47",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2023.47/2023.47_web.jpg",
"width": "701",
"height": "900",
"filesize": "307363",
"filename": "2023.47_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2023.47/2023.47_print.jpg",
"width": "2648",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "3809143",
"filename": "2023.47_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2023.47/2023.47_full.tif",
"width": "7576",
"height": "9729",
"filesize": "221150416",
"filename": "2023.47_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 540588,
"creators": [
{
"id": 3700,
"description": "Richard Cosway (British, 1742\u20131821)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Richard Cosway was Arguably the most fashionable miniature painter in London during the art form\u2019s golden age in
late-eighteenth-century Britain. Also an accomplished painter in oils, Cosway was equally well known for his flamboyant character and the stunning art collection that secured his reputation as an arbiter of taste and model of connoisseurship. His elegant portraits in miniature were coveted by sitters who sought glamour even if it was at the expense of truthfulness. Cosway and his wife, Maria (ne\u00e9 Hadfield), maintained an elite circle of friends who helped define what
was au courant for the age and who consisted primarily of cultural luminaries and young members of high society revolving around George Augustus Frederick, the prince of Wales himself. His steady patronage from 1780 until 1808 fixed Cosway\u2019s popularity within fashionable society. From 1785 Cosway\u2019s miniatures were signed on the back: \u201cPrimarius Pictor Serenissimi Walliae Principis\u201d (Principal Painter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales), a pompous Latin designation that garnered the artist both fame and ridicule. Cosway was a successful artist-celebrity in his own time, and, in spite of being criticized periodically for being too superficially pretty, his miniatures have always been among the most desired by collectors. The Cleveland Museum of Art owns five miniatures by Cosway, painted between 1785 and 1805, that are representative of the artist\u2019s stylistic range during the height of his career.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1742",
"death_year": "1821",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2023-06-05T04:00:00Z",
"sortable_date": 1786,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1786",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": true,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 09:10:49.540000"
}
}