Two Veiled Young Women, probably Lilla Amnani and Her Sister (1786): Art, History and Details

Two Veiled Young Women, probably Lilla Amnani and Her Sister (1786) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Richard Cosway (British, 1742–1821).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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’s 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.

Object facts

• Title: Two Veiled Young Women, probably Lilla Amnani and Her Sister
• Date: 1786
• Creator attribution: Richard Cosway (British, 1742–1821)
• Culture: England
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite, watercolor, red chalk on paper
• Dimensions: 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.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2023.47

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ferrari, Emma, “I Disegni di Riccardo Cosway nella Biblioteca di Lodi,” Rassegna d’Arte XIII (1913)

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.