270 - 19TH-CENTURY ART - ALBERT EDOUARD

19TH-CENTURY ART - ALBERT EDOUARD Albert Jules EDOUARD (born in 1845?) Allegory of Melancholy Oil on canvas, signed upper left Height: 40 cm - Width: 32.5 cm (Yellowed varnish, craquelure, stretched canvas, restorations, missing areas) Commentary: The Neapolitan landscape with a view of Vesuvius in the background suggests that the young woman depicted could be Parthenope, the mythological siren credited with founding Naples. Another iconographic hypothesis allows us to link this portrait to the heroines of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel *The Last Days of Pompeii* (1834), Nydia and Ione.