A caricature of Felix Mendelssohn from 1896 by Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement of fin-de-siècle England that also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.

Traveling to Paris, Beardsley encountered the poster art of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and a rage for Japanese prints. He managed to assimilate these influences, in addition to Pre-Raphaelite models, especially Edward Burne-Jones, in the development of his own distinctive style and contributed significantly to the development of Art Nouveau.

His frequent choice of decadent, grotesque, and salacious subject matter was a cause of continuous controversy, until his early death of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Salome, I get… but Mendelssohn???