Making a Difference in the World

Excavated at the Buddhist site of Hadda in the Gandharan region of Afghanistan, this sculpture portrays a female patron. Her heavy earrings and bracelets indicate her wealth and the diverse cultural influences on Gandhara: gold was imported from the Mediterranean, while her headdress is Kashmiri. The flower she holds represents an offering for the Buddha. Patronage of shrines like Hadda, where the Buddha was believed to have walked, offered patrons a chance of a better reincarnation.

Alexander the Great conquered Gandhara in
the 4th century BCE, and his successors introduced
Hellenistic artistic styles, which artists combined
with Indian influences, especially under the Central
Asian Kushan dynasty. This woman’s drapery evokes
Greek marbles, while her idealized form echoes
classical Hindu depictions of women and goddesses.
The sculptor used stucco, a combination of clay,
straw, and gravel that is faster to work with than
stone, because of the high demand for devotional
sculptures at the time.

During the Amber period of the Mughal Empire, members of the royal court commissioned realistic portraits of themselves and their families. Most likely a member of the ruling family, the subject is heavily decorated with opulent jewelry, displaying her wealth and privilege. She wears a robe of vibrant yellow, a color reserved for royalty. The full profile depiction of her face and three-quarters view of her body reflects a standard formalized pose. Characteristic of Mughal paintings, her features are delicately and precisely depicted. Her half-opened eyes and arched eyebrows reveal a pensive expression as she gazes out into the distance.

Both Mughal artists and their subjects were
predominantly male: only women connected to
powerful families were formally painted, and
unlike male subjects, they were not often painted
from life. In contrast to the naturalism and
accuracy that Mughal emperors prized in male
portraiture, all representations of women are of
ideal types.

Francisco Salzillo y Alcaraz created this portrait of fellow Spaniard Saint Teresa just under two hundred years after her death. The artist’s Saint Teresa of Ávila has her arms spread and her separately carved heart exposed. Inscribed on the heart are words from John 1:14: “verbum caro factum est,” or “The word was made flesh.” In her mystical writings, Saint Teresa described rapturous encounters with God and promoted contemplative prayer as part of her reforms to the Carmelite orders for both men and women.

A prolific author, Saint Theresa described how in one vision, an angel pierced her heart with “a long spear of gold... to leave me all on fire with a great love of God."

As was customary during the eighteenth century, Mrs. Roland Cotton, formerly Deborah Mason, was tied to her husband’s identity and she was expected to uphold the image of a chaste wife. Her garment, soft facial expression, and flushed cheeks indicate fertility and piety. Copley depicts her as wealthy and reserved.

Cotton wears an extravagant blue dress and holds a delicate fan. Her hand placement and position signify a poised and dainty quality that would have been well-regarded in women during the time. Like other Copley portraits, this work emulates the British style prized by American colonists. Copley was the most popular and successful portrait painter in the British North American colonies, well known for his ability to capture a person’s likeness.

For this portrait, Anne Dutton dressed in a gown tied with a gold-embroidered blue sash, the sleeves adorned with pearl ornaments. Looking towards to the side with her hand under her chin, she sits outdoors against a terrace, the foliage taking up most of the background. The daughter of the prominent Lord Sherborne, she married Samuel Blackwell in 1760.

Francis Cotes was a pioneer of English pastel painting and a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768. Although Cotes was originally a trained pastellist, he frequently painted in oil, which was more profitable, during his last decade. Dutton’s elegant gown was most likely painted by Peter Toms, who specialized in painting drapery and was also a founding member of the Royal Academy.

During the colonial period in Lima, the white upper and new merchant classes commissioned portraits of their family members to convey wealth and social standing. Female portraits, which were rare until after 1700, modeled ideal female behavior. The young woman in this portrait wears the finest clothing and accessories, including a richly embroidered dress with a high hemline (a faldallín), a stylized apron (delantera), and silk shoes. Silver and pearl jewelry from the Andean mines—which provided great wealth for Peru—adorn her. She holds a rose in one hand, representing delicacy and femininity, a closed ivory fan in the other, likely imported from Asia and indicating chastity. A cross hangs around her neck, denoting the conservative Catholic culture that produced this portrait.

In this portrait by Jean Urbain Guérin, the subject is wearing a low-cut dress in a style now known as the “Empire silhouette,” named for the First French Empire (1804–1814) and popularized by Napoleon’s first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. After the end of the French Revolution in 1799, women rejected the ornate royal fashions. The high-waisted dresses with flowing skirts freed women from constricting corsets, echoing the country’s freedom from its overthrown aristocracy.

This small artwork by Guérin, a French artist known for his miniature paintings, comprises one of a pair with a portrait of a man in a military uniform. During his career, Guerin painted many subjects from the royal and military classes.

This sixteenth century Italian mezzo rilievo, a sculpture carved in medium relief, depicts a woman named Cecchina in profile. Scholars have debated who the idealized figure represents, but a lack of distinguishing features makes identification difficult. Some believe the sculpture depicts the famous Florentine singer and composer “La Cacchina,” and others believe it is an unknown woman named Francesca, because “Cecchina” has long been a popular nickname for Francesca. The beautiful young woman presents challenges for researchers interested in knowing more about her centuries later.

The pendant of the necklace, a delicate carving of Cupid, the Roman god of love and fertility, may have been added in the nineteenth century to underscore the seductive beauty of Cecchina.

Ukiyo-e, translating to “picture[s] of the floating world,” refers to Japanese woodblock prints and paintings that romanticized daily life of Edo-period Japan (1603-1868), and often depict scenes in the city's licensed pleasure quarters. In this woodblock print, one of the movement’s most highly regarded artists, Kitagawa Utamaro, depicts the courtesan Midorigi arranging a vase of ominaeshi, one of the traditional seven flowers of autumn and used to identify beautiful women, in the teahouse of Wakematsuya.

Utamaro draws the courtesan in typical ukiyo-e bijin-ga fashion (“pictures of beautiful women”). He depicts Midorigi’s features as beautiful yet generic, in order to abide by Japan’s art censorship laws. Midorigi’s layered kimonos, hairstyle (datehyougo), and hair ornaments (kanzashi), indicate that she is an oiran, a high-ranking and often well-known courtesan skilled in the arts, beauty, and entertainment, including tea ceremonies (sadō), flower arrangement (ikebana), calligraphy, and musical instruments.

Commissioned by the French government to demonstrate ethnographic types through sculpture, Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier intended for his artworks to educate the French public about non-French people. Like many Europeans of the time, he believed that people’s appearances could convey inherent physical and cultural differences.

A derogatory term referring to a Caribbean woman of African and European descent, “La Capresse” reflects the racist system in which it was first displayed. In this sculpture, Cordier emphasizes qualities associated with people of African descent. The coils of her perfectly coiffed hair frame her face, exposing her arched eyebrows, defined brow ridge, high-cheekbones, almond shaped eyes, button nose, and full lips. With a pretense of science, this sculpture was crafted to fulfill expectations of blackness in contrast with European ideas of white racial purity.

Cornelia Lyman Warren, in her almost life-size, full-length portrait, grasps a fashionable riding hat, habit, gloves, and a crop, as if she has stopped briefly before dashing off for a horse ride. She was fourteen years old in 1871 when she sat for Alexandre Cabanel while visiting Paris with her mother. The Warrens were a powerful Boston family who had residences on Beacon Hill and in the countryside in Waltham, Massachusetts. A great philanthropist and strong supporter of education throughout her life, Cornelia Warren served as a trustee of Wellesley College from 1900 until 1913. Her brother, Edward Perry Warren, bequeathed the portrait to Wellesley College in 1929.

By the 1860s, Cabanel, an academy-trained painter who lived and worked in Paris, had received prestigious commissions for history paintings, and distinguished himself as a portraitist who was sought after among French and American aristocrats, particularly among women. Adept in depicting personalities, Cabanel portrayed his female sitters with an aura of chastity, dignity, cool detachment, and intellect expected of upper-class American women of the time, as seen in Warren’s portrait.

Dressed in formal attire with her hair done in osuberakashi style and crowned, Empress Haruko gently folds her arms in front of her body to hold an open fan. She wears a self-possessed expression and twelve layers of kimono garments, reflecting an emphasis on the concept of ryosai kenbo, or “good wife, wise mother.” Taken in black and white, the photograph was colored by hand. It was purchased by a Wellesley professor of history, Mary Alice Knox, who traveled to Japan in 1886 specifically to gather images from which she would be able to teach Asian history.

Created by a Baule artist in the Ivory Coast, this ndoma mask offers an idealized portrait of a woman. The smooth, lustrous glow of the wood indicates health and wellness, and the prominent forehead symbolizes intellectual enlightenment. Commissioned by a male relative of its subject, this ndoma, meaning “namesake” or “double,” would have portrayed a living counterpart respected for her talents and contributions to her family. The Baule regarded these objects as spiritually powerful and kept them under a cloth in the household for protection; they believed that looking directly at these masks during non-ritual ceremonies was dangerous.

Scarifications (ngole) line the sides of the mouth and the cheekbones of the mask and mark the space between the eyebrows. Although the practice is not as common today, Baule people long used scarification as a “mark of civilization” that enhanced human beauty and made it distinct from nature.

Cecilia Beaux, one of the most successful American portrait painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, painted subjects of all ages from upper-class families. In this portrait, Beaux depicts five-year-old Harriet Sears Amory standing in the center of the painting wearing a yellow kimono.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese ports reopened trade to the West, allowing for the introduction of Japanese products into Europe and the United States. The fashion for Japanese aesthetics became a phenomenon known as Japonism. Intrigue with Japanese culture remained strong at the turn of the twentieth century, and luxury items, such as the kimono and the bonsai tree seen in this portrait, were markers of wealth and taste among privileged upper-class American families. The wealthy Amory family included prominent political figures and formed part of the Boston elite, often referred to as the Boston Brahmins.

American photographer E.J. Bellocq took this portrait in 1912, but the photograph was not developed until after his death, when it was found with many similar portraits. The subject is an unknown sex worker from the New Orleans red-light district, Storyville.

Bellocq’s Storyville portraits have been studied extensively, and even inspired novels and films. However, these studies focus almost entirely on the artist, and many questions remain about the subjects, about whom we know little.

Three women created this portrait: Artemis Tavshanjian, the artist; Alice Van Vechten Brown, the sitter; and Sirarpie Der Nersessian, the patron. Brown revolutionized the study of art history by creating hands-on laboratory classes at Wellesley to complement lectures. While director of the Farnsworth Museum, as Wellesley’s art museum was then called, Brown improved its operations and reputation. When Nersessian, a prominent Armenian-American scholar of Byzantine and Armenian art became director, she commissioned portraits of her predecessors, Brown and Myrtilla Avery.

Armenian-American artist Artemis Tavshanjian painted
this portrait of Brown after the Farnsworth exhibited her miniatures. Like
historic American and British miniaturists, Tavshanjian worked with watercolor
on ivory, a intricate process considered appropriate for female artists.
Miniatures had become obsolete after the invention of photography, but were
revived during the Colonial Revival movement, inspired by the 1876 Centennial.
Tavshanjian’s work won awards for it’s delicate brushstrokes and realistic
appearance.