Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii

Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii was inspired by a character in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s popular 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii. Rogers chose to portray her as she escapes from the erupting Mount Vesuvius and searches for her lost companions, including the man she loves. Rogers’s sculpture captured the qualities of purity and bravery that so appealed to the Victorian public. The face is sweet and has softly rounded, idealized features. The dramatic vitality of the swirling drapery has invited comparisons with the Hellenistic Greek sculpture, Old Market Woman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), as well as the work of Italian Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Rogers’s interpretation of Nydia was extremely popular; he fulfilled at least fifty-two orders for replicas of the statue between 1867 and 1888. It remains Rogers’s best-known work.