Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful?

I absolutely love this painting and would love a copy!
My first thoughts are that she is seductive, beautiful,  elegant, sensuous, amorous, glamorous, evocative, erotic, fashionable, wealthy, intellectual, educated.  Someone who mixes in the circles of the elite and the bourgeoisie, with artists, musicians, composers, poets, writers. Someone who appreciates music, dance, or cabaret.
Perhaps this pretty-in-pink-woman has been sipping expensive pink champagne as she poses for the artist. (I would like that!)  She the muse, turns her head  haughtily or naughtily to one side, so that he can replicate her exquisite features with a Grecian or Roman nose.  Tricky to define! She drops the dress from her shoulder! It says what it does!


I did some research:
Her name is Marthe de Florian, an actress. She appears to be wearing a wedding ring.
The artist is Giovanni Bondini - the date1898 - It was at the time of La Belle Époque in Paris.
In Society the artist and she would have appreciated Debussy or Ravel, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rousseau, Matisse, Rimbaud or Verlaine.
A shadow falls upon the opulence depicted in the frame.
A shadow falls upon the history of this story.

Evidently, it has been reported that the owner of the Parisian apartment  fled to the South of France in 1940 to avoid the German invasion of Paris. She abandoned all her possessions which she had inherited from her grandmother and never returned but did continue to pay the rental! When she died at the age of 91 in 2010 the heirs of her estate ordered an inventory to be made of the items in the apartment which were covered on dust and cobwebs and had not seen the light of day for 70 years!

The person who discovered this painting said "his heart skipped a beat" when he saw it.
My heart skipped a beat when I found it on the internet.
I loved it so much I sent it to a friend and oh my! 

I discovered the story of the house frozen in time because I wanted to find new internet reading so had googled BLOGS IN FRANCE and the choices  revealed the following blog:
http://www.theparisblog.com/     Scroll down to the date January 2nd 2014

You can read more at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8042281/Parisian-flat-containing-2.1-million-painting-lay-untouched-for-70-years.html

and also at: http://www.house-crazy.com/a-parisian-apartment-frozen-in-time-for-70-years/
and at:   http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/32/Madame_de_Florians_Abandoned_Apartment