Ewa Juszkiewicz

Ferdynand Pinck’s drawings are based on the work of Friefrich Rahberg, who was the first to depict Emma Hamilton’s attitudes. Rahberg was inspired by the sketches of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, who, in turn, copied on paper the images from Greek vases from Sir William Hamilton’s collection. Emma, just like the Greek vases, was a part of her husband’s collection, his trophy. When she act out scenes from the antiquity, she gave life to the collection. The work by Ewa Juszkiewicz constitutes a reference to the vase paintings from Hamilton’s collection, and it touches upon the subject of imprisonment in a given role, the obligation to perform. Because, despite the apparent emancipation, that was the fate of Lady Hamilton, ‘the first performer’, and many other women in the Age of Enlightenment.