01 Work, Orientalist Artist, Fabio Fabbi’s A veiled Egyptian woman with an arousa el burka the traditional face veil, with footnotes #129

Henry Zaidan
2 min readSep 4, 2024

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Fabio Fabbi (Italian, 1861–1946)
A veiled Egyptian woman with an arousa el burka the traditional face veil

Oil on canvas
46.5 x 37.5 cm. (18.3 x 14.8 in.)
Private collection

Estimated at USD 11,000 .- to USD 16,000 .- in October 2018

The arousa el burqa is the large tubular object, almost out of proportion, resting on the forehead of the woman depicted on the postcard above. These aouras are part of the Egyptian face veil and an amulet holder (or amulet in its own right), worn on a string on the forehead of the wearer. Literally, arousa means the ‘bride (or doll) of the veil’. They are in fact the only decoration on the traditional translucent, black Egyptian veil. These face veils were made of black crinkly silk, lace or crocheted cloth, sometimes produced in Mahalla el Kubra now located within the city of Cairo. More on The arousa el burqa

Fabio Fabbi was an Italian painter working in the Orientalist tradition. Born in Bologna, Italy in 1861, he began his artistic career by studying at the Accademia Di Belle Arti in Florence in the 1880s. He would gain considerable popularity for his exoticized, Neoclassical paintings, usually depicting Middle Eastern and North African street scenes and featuring harem women, dancers, and Muslim warriors. Fabbi’s work was considered more commercial than many of his peers, resulting in the artist’s fiscal prosperity and his frequent contributions to exhibitions in Turin, Milan, and Florence. He died in 1946. More on Fabio Fabbi

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Henry Zaidan

In my Blog is an Online collection of significant paintings from the 1st century to today; complete with art-history and artist bibliographies.