Solace

Two women sit on bare ground in Greek dress. The older one has pulled the younger against her shoulder and holds her head. Behind them, across the plain, is the rock of the Acropolis.

The gallery's record gives the year, 1847, the size, 44 by 57 centimetres, and the title. Nothing in it names the women or says what the grief is, and Vryzakis put no flag and no battle in the picture to explain it.

Athens had been the capital of the new kingdom for 13 years by then, a town of roughly 25,000 people, and the rock behind the two figures was being stripped back to its ancient state in exactly those years. The mosque that stood inside the Parthenon was dismantled in 1843.