Graziella is an 1852 novel by the French author
Alphonse de Lamartine. It tells of a young French man who falls in love with the eponymous character, a fisherman's granddaughter, during a trip to
Naples, Italy; they are separated when he must return to France, and Graziella dies soon afterwards. The novel received popular acclaim; an operatic adaptation had been completed by the end of the year, and the work influenced paintings, poems, novels, and films. This 1878 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist
Jules Joseph Lefebvre shows Graziella sitting on a rock, fishing net in hand, gazing over her shoulder at a smoking
Mount Vesuvius in the distance. The painting is now in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Painting credit: Jules Joseph Lefebvre