Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)

poetry by Charles Baudelaire (French, 1821-1867)

Portrait of Lola de Valence, 1862-63

Art Institute of Chicago

On Manet’s Picture “Lola of Valencia”

Amongst the myriad flowers on beauty’s stem
It’s hard to choose. Such crowds there are of them
But Lola burns with unexpected fuel
The radiance of a black and rosy jewel.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)