Windmills

A Greek windmill of this period was a machine with a crew. The standard Aegean type is a round whitewashed tower of two or three floors, and the sails are triangular sheets of canvas lashed to eight thin spars. The miller read the wind and reefed them accordingly, rolling canvas in when it blew hard and letting it out when it dropped, and inside, the gear turned one millstone over another to grind wheat, barley or maize.

Through the 19th century this was simply how the islands and the coast got their flour. Places with steady wind milled for export as well as for themselves, and a hilltop could carry ten mills working side by side.

Volanakis gave the subject a very small canvas, 28 by 42 centimetres, and the picture carries no date, so where the mills stood is not recorded in the gallery's entry for it.