Italy‚ mid 18th century
Many of Pietro Rotari’s portraits show buxom women with suggestive looks on their faces. La Penitente is a young girl who is either ashamed of something she has done or seen.
Russia‚ late 18th century
Countess Varvara Sheremetev was one of the richest women in Russia in the 1760s. She had a Kalmyk serf named Annushka, whom she educated.
Benin‚ early 19th century
Benin was a powerful and West African state for several hundred years, well before contact with Europeans., with distinctive artistic styles in their sculpture.
Persia‚ mid 19th century
Girls are often shown performing domestic tasks. Weaving, knitting, sewing, and other textile arts are usually the realm of the female, regardless of class.
New Zealand‚ mid 19th century
Portraits of indigenous people, especially women and girls, are on one hand renderings of distant ‘realities’, but on the other, they are exploitive and imperialistic.