Tate Gallery, London
Date: c. 1812-1820
Technique: Oil on canvas, 970 x 700 mm
The lord of a castle shows an unseen visitor his faithless wife, secreted in a sepulchral chamber, embracing the headless, skeletal remains of her lover. A young admirer recalled Fuseli telling the story: ‘At breakfast Fuseli mentioned a picture which he had just sketched from an ancient German Ballad and promised at night to relate the Story – for he said it must be at night – “I can only tell it at night”’.
Source
I strolled over to your blog from Tumblr [hat tip to 2headedsnake], and became fascinated by the story behind this Fuseli picture. Although I have tried my Google-foo, I cannot find the German ballad which [may have] inspired this picture. I did find a delightful essay http://kirjasto.sci.fi/fuseli.htm
ReplyDelete"... his best-known scene, The Nightmare, ... A young woman is mounted by a demonic looking incubus; the monster literally is a burden on her heart. She lies in a sprawl, with her arm hanging down. ... Sleeping Woman and the Furies (1821) took the sexual undertones even further. Now the woman is half-naked and her figure suggest that she has been violated. Another cruel fantasy was Wolfram Looking at his Wife, whom he has Imprisoned with the Corpse of her Lover (1812-20). From these and other works it has been concluded, that Fuseli was a misogynist and he feared and loathed dominant women."
So perhaps the German ballad was apocryphal.
Thanks for the comment, Blue.
ReplyDeleteI found that this painting was based on one of the Margaret of Navarre's stories from 'Heptaméron'. Maybe she used motives from some German ballad.