Greek Men and Women Dancing the Khorra

Khorra is how western visitors wrote the Greek word choros, which simply means a dance. Out in wooded country beyond the city, Greek men and women are dancing it together, and at the left a bagpiper plays for them.

The Rijksmuseum explains why Vanmour could watch a scene like this at close range. He was a Christian, and the Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul was far easier for him to get to know than Turkish family life, which stayed largely closed to a foreign man. Among the pictures owned by the Dutch ambassador Cornelis Calkoen, a Greek wedding takes place indoors, in a family house. This one goes outdoors, to the Greeks at leisure in the countryside outside Istanbul.