L’Isle de Chypre: types et moeurs, la fete de Venus a Larnaca

Sosthene Grasset lived in Cyprus from 1860 to 1868. He was married to a local French girl, Aimee Laffon, and he was very interested in the antiquities of the island. He saw himself as an intellectual whose duty was to procure art treasures for his country. He wrote letters to Napoleon III and his sister Mme Cornu and to officials of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs urging them to organize expeditions to Cyprus to take advantage of the island’s archaeological wealth. He wrote articles on the history, politics and sociology of the island which were often accompanied by his own illustrations and published in various French magazines. This particular engraving was published in Le Monde Illustre and describes the feast of Cataclysmos. Two Turkish musicians at the bow are playing for dancers in a boat. They are watched by women on a pier, dressed in the typical white robes of the Moslem tradition and by men in their festive attires. Grasset portrays elegance and allure not characteristic of a nation under Ottoman rule or of feasts such as the Cataclysmos which can be picturesque, vivacious, noisy but certainly not elegant. For the Cypriots, he borrowed the postures and accessories, including parasols of habitués of the Paris salons those to whom he was addressing his picture. The background is also false. The two minarets never stood at the entrance of the harbour of Larnaca neither did the Greek edifice similar to the classical buildings of the Acropolis ever existed. He was using artistic license to amalgamate the Greek and the Moslem in his effort to demonstrate how both participated in this originally pagan feast. The image was accompanied by the following description: ‘In the evening, the decorated boats awaited the pilgrims who descended from all the mountains in the island; the caiques were filled with Greek women wearing bodices embroidered in gold thread and Moslem women draped in long white muslin, which made them resemble ghosts. Each caique had on its bow two Moslem musicians, one of whom played the flute and the other a big drum. I do not know why this privilege was reserved for the Moslems and why they always use only two instruments. Nevertheless, it is probable that the flute represents Venus vernal and the drum Cypris of Venus autumnal. The women do not dance at all during this feast. But the Moslem and Christian men compete in leaping in the caiques and at the cafes. It is in fact rare for a few drops of blood not to appear at these waterside scenes and as the Moslems are less used to drinking than the Christians, it is they who bloodstain the feast’.