Ixion and Nephele

A ‘poetic painter’, Henry Fuseli focused on the power of dramatic expression and the sublime poetics conveyed in classical texts by Ovid, Homer and Pythian. This scene is an adaptation of Pindar’s Pythian, Ode II lines 2-89. After finding out that Ixion has tried to seduce Zeus’s wife Hera, Zeus binds Ixion to a flaming spinning wheel and forces him to continuously repeat, ‘Show gratitude to your benefactor’.