Rogers' Nydia Up Close

by Cora Wandel

Title

Rogers' Nydia Up Close

Artist

Cora Wandel

Medium

Photograph

Description

"Nydia" was a blind flower seller in the 1834 novel "Last Days of Pompeii" by Edward Bulwer Lytton. The book was an international bestseller, and the character of Nydia became a literary star. Rogers wrote with great poignancy of Nydia wandering through the wreckage of Pompeii as the erupting volcano Mount Vesuvius destroys the city. It was a very dramatic portrayal; the young girl guiding herself around the destruction of the city with only her acute sense of hearing and a staff she carried. Nydia was a slave who was in love with her master, and as she aimlessly wanders around the city she listens intently for his voice.

In 1853, sculptor Randolph Rogers brilliantly captured the character of Nydia in a marble sculpture which became so popular that by the time Rogers died in 1892, he had made fifty replicas of it for museums and private citizens throughout the world.

This sculpture of Nydia was photographed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Uploaded

November 4th, 2016

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